Keeping file sizes small - F J Winters September 07, 2002

Keeping File Sizes Small - F J Winters 09/07/02, 07/24/06, 03/27/09

Reduce Document (.Doc and .Docx) File Sizes

Reduce Access (.mdb and .accdb) File Sizes

Reduce Microsoft Word File Sizes

An obvious way to reduce file sizes is to avoid inserting large graphic images and media clips. If you paste huge images into any file, the file will become huge. Screen captures and Windows .Bmp graphics are huge memory hogs. I often tell my students that .Bmp (the standard Windows graphics file type) stands for Big Memory Pig. The Internet uses .Gif (for drawings less than 256 colors) and .Jpg files (for photos with many thousands of colors). They are usually much more than ten times smaller in size than a comparable .Bmp file. If you use MS Paint (Start, Programs, Accessories, Paint) you can choose Save As, and under Save as type choose .Gif and .Jpg to convert a .Bmp to a much more reasonable format and size.

If your file size is huge, delete the pictures in your current document and replace them with reasonably sized JPGs. Keep in mind that even some JPG files can be very large. Today’s megapixel digital cameras take high resolution images that can be 8 ½ x 11 inches in size, 2400 pixels wide and about 900K to 2 MB in size.

Some numbers: Say the picture from your high resolution digital camera is 2400 pixels wide and you want to insert a small picture into the corner of your document. When you insert a 2400 pixel 2MB image into your document, you just increased a file that might have been 100K to a file size of over 2MB (2,000K). Add a second image and it is now about 4MB. When you use the resizing handles to make these huge pictures small enough to fit on the page the file size is still 4MB in size, because what you really did was to make the images appear smaller, but they still retain their bit size. However, if you resize an image before you insert it, you will greatly reduce your file size. Perhaps you might choose to make it a more reasonable 240 pixels wide. 240 is 1/10 of the width or 2400, but also 1/10 of the height as well and consequently you can actually make the file size nearly a 100 times smaller. Most paint programs have a resize option – in Windows Paint (Start, Programs, Accessories, Paint) choose: Image > Resize/Skew.

In Microsoft Office Picture Manager: Click [Edit Pictures] > Resize (Notice that there are also Crop and Red-Eye removal tools as well.) There is also an Edit Pictures] > Compress Pictures

If you do not know what Paint programs you have on your computer – locate your image file in the Windows Explorer, Right-click and choose Open With – a list of Paint and Image programs on your machine will appear.

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Microsoft Office XP and 2003 has a horrible feature called Fast Saves. This allows you to save your files a few milliseconds faster, but Fast Saves really means very slow loads and very huge file sizes.

For example:

Let’s suppose you have a 10-slide PowerPoint presentation with a file size of 4 Megabytes. It is too big to send through Angel. So you would think that you could delete 5 of 10 slides and then have an approximately 2 Megabyte file that would meet the size limit. But in actuality, cutting the number of slides in half would actually increase the file size to about 4.1 Megabytes if Fast Saves is turned on. That is because Fast Saves does not really delete the cut slides (or deleted text, or data). Fast Saves instead just “marks” the area for deletion or the changes, and only appends modification notes to the end of the file. Consequently, as you edit, the file size just grows and grows, especially with PowerPoint and Access files.

* One way to reduce the huge file sizes of Office XP/2003 is to simply Save the file under a different name.

* Or you can turn off Fast Saves in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint: choose Tools, Options, select the Save tab, and uncheck Allow fast saves.

* Note: Office 2007 file sizes are almost always smaller than Office 2003 file sizes. So you can also bring your .doc files into the MCC computer lab and open them with Office 2007 and Save them as the newer .Docx files to reduce their file size.

Reduce Microsoft Access File Sizes

To reduce a bloated Access File, first back up your .mdb file just in case (select the file; Ctrl C to copy, then Ctrl V to paste). Then in Office XP/2003 choose Tool >, Database Utilities > Compact and Repair Database, select the desired file to Compact, and save it under the same name. In Office 2007 choose Office button > [Access Options] > Current Database > check Compact on Close.

Windows .Bmp graphics are huge memory hogs. I often tell my students that .Bmp (the standard Windows graphics file type) stands for Big Memory Pig. The Internet uses .Gif (for drawings less than 256 colors) and .Jpg files (for photos). They are usually much more than ten times smaller in size than a comparable .Bmp file. If you use MS Paint (Start, Programs, Accessories, Paint) you can choose Save As, and under Save as type choose .Gif and .Jpg to convert a .Bmp to a much more reasonable format and size. Then choose: Image > Resize/Skew to reduce its overall pixel size, instead of using the resizing handles, which makes the image appear smaller, but the picture still retains its bit size.

However, some versions of Access have a bug when it comes to file sizes and graphics. Using .Bmp files in Access is actually better than the traditionally smaller .Jpgs. In Paint (Start, Programs. Accessories, Paint) choose Image, Stretch/Skew to cut the file size 50% - which is actually 1/4 the size because it is 50% vertically and 50% horizontally. For some reason Access has a bug that takes small files like .Jpg files and dramatically increases file sizes tenfold when small .Jpgs are added. For some reason the bigger .Bmp files (Big Memory Pig or Bit Map) files may actually do better in Access. You may have to delete the pictures in your Access file and put them back in. BUT then you will probably have to do another step 1. Back up your file as a precaution, then in Office 2003 choose Tools, Database Utilities, Compact and Repair Database, select the desired file to Compact, and save it under the same name. In Office 2007 choose Office button > [Access Options] > Current Database > check Compact on Close. This is because when you delete pictures or records in Access, they really have not been deleted, they have been “marked” for deletion and the file size actually grows when part of the file is deleted, because the marker is saved.

Reduce Word Web Page (.Htm) File Sizes by 30-50%:

File, Save as Web Page

In Save as type: box, choose Web Page, Filtered (*.htm; *.html)

While you are there, be sure to set your Page Title in this dialog box as well by clicking the Change Title button