File size question
 

Gentlemens (and ladies if there be any ....),

A friend has recently contacted me with questions regarding a 90 page MS word document which he is presently polishing, and its eventual distribution as an attachment(s) within a Yahoo group which I manage . Unfortunately he doesn't know the current size of the file, and I've asked him to establish that for me, however it seems probable that it will have to be split into smaller servings anyway.

As a broad principle, if the final document is saved as a pdf file (something which I understand is possible with later versions of Word - there may be other ways of doing it) will the size of the file be smaller than the original .doc file - or larger - or about the same size anyway??

There is a certain - perhaps ill-founded - preference for distributing it in pdf format anyway, but if there is a significantly smaller file size involved - all else being equal - this may well tip the scales in that direction.

Thanks for any guidance on this,

FoR

Size depends to an extent how you produce a PDF. But there are many good reasons for distributing a document intended for reading (rather than editing) in PDF in my view. There are plenty of simple programs out there to produce a PDF these days, perhaps the easiest are those that create a PDF printer driver - here is a selection.

You'll get the best reduction in file size for a Word doc containing graphics (this applies to most formats, in fact) but you will still get improvements with simple text contents. One of the main benefits that you might find useful from PDF is that the doc will be presented and laid out in the way that the originator intended.

as a rule a PDF will always be larger than the originating document - partly because of the way in which fonts are embedded in the PDF file. How much larger depends on the file content - could 10%, could be 500%. Also different PDF writing programs have different results. All you can do is try several and see.

However, despite that, distributing in PDF makes a lot of sense, even if only to hinder others from tampering with the document post-distribution

Milo,

Using CutePDF writer I find the opposite - that the PDF is about 1/3 smaller than the original .DOCX. I admit that my sample size is quite small - only a dozen docs or so.

SD

Why "distribute"?

It is considered polite to post any large document on a website and let people pick up the parts they want.

I would suggest posting a synopsis, an index, and several separate parts.

If you write the index in html or in a doc with html links then the parts can be accessed by clicking on the links.

I would recommend doc rather than pdf for ease of reading, copying extracts etc. Not docx, some folk still can't access that.

Nothing wrong with giving recipients the option by providing links to all possible file formats, let them choose.

It is possible to post on a separate site or within Yahoo!

To keep it private to the group?

Ever heard of a password protected website ? :ugh:

As mike-wsm said, unless you can figure out a way to generate a PDF file that is less than two or three MB in size, it is very poor form to spam out a bunch of emails with large attachments (assuming of course, the recipient's servers don't limit attachment size).

"Using CutePDF writer I find the opposite - that the PDF is about 1/3 smaller than the original .DOCX"

interesting......I wonder if thats because you are using .docx rather than .doc.....?? My experience is that .docx files are inflated compared to the equivalent .doc

Thanks Milo, and all others for your input

The group itself is private (95 members) and all people are known to one another. Loading the file(s) to the file section for the group is indeed obvious and will be done anyway. However the larger number of the members are not into computers / internet to the depth that they would be able to jump through the hoops to enable this. They are expecting this contribution and be looking to receive it in the least complicated way.
I'll do some experimenting with the files sizes and formats to establish what works best. Your information shared has been most helpful :ok:
Thanks again,
FOR