Help with MS Word "bloat:?
 

I have a 23 page MS word document consisting of a number of tables which is updated from time to time.

It has now become painfully large (like about 1.92Mb) and I know that a goodly part of the bloat is down to MS Word's habit of squirreling away all the things that have been deleted over a period of time.

I do know that one can get rid of all the saved history by opening it as a text document and then pasting it all into a new MS Word document. But then I'm going to lose all the tables.

Does anyone out there know of a slightly more elegant way of getting rid of the history so that I can get it down to a more manageable size and not lose the tables?

Just for reference, I'm using MS Word 2000

Thanks in anticipation ...

I believe that if you save your file in RTF format, you'll lose the bloat. I stand to be corrected, however :)

Feline,

If you are worried about the size of the file to where you cannot fit it on a floppy. A simple walk around is to use Winzip. It will get the file down to a more manageable size, but it will not remove any of the Bloat that MS Word put in it.

Take Care,

Richard

P.S. RomeoTangoFoxtrotMike, I try not to change the file extension in Word since I always manage to screw up the formatting. :eek: (If your solution works, that would be a good one to add to the Windows Tips Thread TCS started!) :ok:

I have vague memories of fixing problems like this by switching off fast save. But having Googled for it that might be a word version or two out of date :

http://www.lookgood.demon.co.uk/txt_fastsave.html


Have you tried open office? (www.openoffice.org) download free from:

http://download.openoffice.org/index.html

I use it on my laptop and Word 2000 in the office, no problems transfering files between the two, in the current version - even track changes is compatible. Open office files are consistently much much smaller than the word equivalent.

I have just converted a document, the word file is 19k, the open office writer file is 11k. The look the same and print the same.

Richard,

I try to avoid using Word altogether :yuk: however, ISTR discovering that saving the file as RTF (Rich Text Format) removes all the extraneous material (including all the embarassing change marks that have caught more than a few people out :ooh: ) You don't change the extension, BTW, you use File, then Save As and select RTF (Rich Text Format)

When I get a few minutes, I'll do some tests and if they pan out, I'll post somethin in TCS' thread.

Errm - RTFM - the .doc file went from 1.92Mb to 7.08Mb in the .rtf file - which is about the right magnitude of change I would like but in totally the wrong direction!

What's irritating about this is that I've had the problem before - and cracked it - but for the life of me I can't remember how!

I seem to remember there is a quite neat way of doing it ???

I do rather agree that MS Word really is a bit of a dog (I simply love the way that you make one change in a table and ooops! The whole damn table changes). But it's the one all the punters at the other end use ...

When I'm a little less submerged in the swamp with this particular problem I'll take another look at Open Office - is that what used to be Star Office?

And thanks Richard - but some of the folk I deal with don't quite have the mentality to even unzip files - Doh! - and all I'm trying to do is save a bit of upload/download time ...

Open office is the free version of Star Office.

If you buy Star Office form Sun you get formal support.

Sticking to solutions that don't require a software change:

If this is just a table would it be any smaller in Excel?

Is it smaller as HTML?

Feline,

:hmm: OK, so what happens when you read the RTF file in and save it back to .doc format ?

RomeoTangoFoxtrotMike,

Bad choice of words. :eek:

Should have said, saving with a different format/extension.

Richard

I was stumbling around in my Word 97 and found something that might help.

Open the document in question and select File|Versions .

One of the options I see is Delete . I didn't try it (don't have a "versioned" document), but I assume that you can select older versions and delete them.

Try at your own risk.

SC

Dunnit!
 

Well RTFM, that seems to do the trick!

Doc1.doc = 1.97Mb

Save in .RTF format

Doc2.rtf = 7.08Mb

Save again in .DOC format

Doc3.doc = 1.16Mb

Which is a satisfying 41% reduction in size. So thanks RTFM! When I've worked out the parameters, I'll e-mail you a coconut!

Also tried:

Edit|Select All => Edit|Copy => File|New|Blank Document => Edit|Paste

Which gives about the same reduction in size, but changes the font and seems to embolden some of the text on a random basis.

And Roundtripping it through HTM produces an intermediate .HTM file of 4.23Mb (+ 123Kb "files" folder) and opening the .HTM file in MS Word and re-saving it as a .DOC file produces a file of 2.84Mb.

Thanks for all your help folks - as usual the PPrune community comes through!

If you're worried about file size and transferring between computers, a USB memory stick is probably the answer. I bought 2, each at 64Mb, and the computer treats it as a removable hard disk. The speed of transfer of data is as fast as the software can handle it and they are the size if a cigarette lighter...