How to reduce the size of a Word document file

In this tutorial, I will guide to you how to reduce the size of a Word document file. We will compress the word file to make it smaller.

First of all, do you know why your Word file is so heavy? Maybe because the amount of data inside is too large, or because the images you insert also take up a lot of total text space. This may make it more difficult to send files or store them to take more memory. Moreover, some file transfer tools limit the amount of space you can transfer, if your file is too heavy, you will not be able to send it.
Therefore, I will guide you to reduce the size of Word files by compressing it, especially without using any software.
I’m doing this on MS Word 2016 version, other versions are similar.
Okay, let proceed on this file of mine. Here I got a 529KB Word file. This is quite a light file but I will take it as an example. Let’s reduce its size.

How to reduce the size of a Word document 2016.

Step 1: Open the file.
We all know if a file is too heavy it may contain a lot of images in it. To reduce the size, you must compress the images in the file.

Step 2: Select the image to be compressed. Then go to Format, in the Adjust section choose Compress Picture.

Step 3: Check the box E-Mail(96 ppi): minimize document size for sharing, which means the lowest quality for image. This is to reduce the size of the whole document. Also don’t worry, the image will still be clear.
Tick the box Apply only to this picture if you just want to compress only the selected picture.
OK to save.

Now surely the file has been lighter, we will remove the image editing feature.
Step 4: In tab File, go to Options to open Word Options box.

Step 5: In Advanced, move to Image Size and Quality section, check the box Discard editing data. OK to save.

That’s all the works. Now you can come back to check if the file has been lighter or not.

From 529KB to 151KB.
Note: If you embed fonts, people can read or print your document with the fonts you used to write it, even if those fonts are not available on their system, so this will make your file much more heavier. So don’t embed font unless it is required.
If you have to embed fonts, please choose the option to embed fonts that consume as little space as possible. Follow this link below for instruction: https://mechanicalengblog.com/how-to-embed-font-in-word-document/
Moreover, one of my suggestions is that you can compress Word files by Winrar or Zip when sending your document, this will help reduce the file size a lot, try it out.

CONCLUSION
My tutorial has ended. Hope that after this article you will know how to compress files as well as reduce your word file size, to be more convenient in storing and sending files, I’m sure it will be very useful for you.
Thank you for taking the time to read and good luck.

———————–

Author-hhchi