Preparing an MS OFFICE document for the Web

Tips for Reducing File Size in MS Word

Don't Paste Images - Insert Them

When an image is copied to the computer's clipboard and pasted straight into Microsoft Word, the image is pasted as a bitmap, (BMP)—regardless of the file format of the original image.

Bitmap images are very large in file size and are low in detail, resulting in a much larger Word document than necessary, especially if there are several images pasted in this way. Instead of pasting, insert images:

Select Insert > Picture > From File…
Browse to the location of the image
Select the image file and click Insert

Compress Images

Even when an image is inserted into Word, it can still be an inefficient file.
If the image has been cropped after insertion, the cropped portion of the image is still in the file.
It is also possible that the image will have a higher resolution than can be viewed on screen or printed.

Read Optimizing Images in Microsoft Office

Don't Save Versions

When saving a document, Microsoft Word has the ability to save it not only in its current state but also in all previous states. This feature, Versions saves a separate version of the document inside the same file. The problem with this is that every different version saved takes up disk space. Do not activate the Versions feature, and if you have, turn it off.

To turn off and remove Versions:

Select File » Versions…
The Versions in [FILENAME] dialog box will open (above), where [FILENAME] is the name of your file.
Ensure that the Automatically save a version on close option is not ticked.
Select an item from the Existing versions list and click the Delete button.
Repeat step 4 for every remaining version until the list is empty.
Click the Close button.

Turn off Fast Save

Convert Embedded Objects into Images

Convert to RTF

Last Updated: March 14, 2018