How to Resize a Word Document File Size

Word files tend to be pretty small compared to their multimedia counterparts, but when they do get big they become a hassle for people to download and can waste bandwidth if you're hosting them on your own website. The biggest contributors to file size bloat in a Word document are embedded objects -- separate files you insert into a Word document for convenience or extra functionality -- and graphics. Keep your embedded objects and graphics under control and you can easily pare your document down to a reasonable size.

Embedded objects include any type of external file that Word is capable of containing in your document, such as spreadsheets, PDF files, advanced diagrams and math equations. The more of these embedded objects that you can remove from your document, the more you can resize your file to something more manageable. Perhaps you can remove some of these objects altogether; others maybe you can replace. If you have an embedded object whose function is strictly visual, like a diagram or a math equation, you can take a screenshot of the content using the "Print Screen" or "Prt Sc" button on your keyboard and then paste the screenshot into any image editor -- such as Paint, which comes with Windows. From there you can crop the screenshot and save it as an image and then insert the image into your Word document in place of the original embedded object, potentially saving a great deal of space.

To compress graphics in Word 2013, click on one of the images in your document. The Picture Tools menu will appear on the Ribbon. Click on "Format," choose "Compress Pictures" and then click "E-mail" to be the target output. Note that if you deselect "Apply only to this picture," Word will compress all the graphics in your document -- a good way to save time by doing everything at once. Depending on the number and image quality of the graphics in your document, compressing graphics can potentially shave a multi-megabyte file down to a few hundred kilobytes.