How to Reduce the Size of Images in Office Documents

Published May 6, 2016

If you prepare Office documents with lots of images, sharing them can be hard due to file size constraints. Here’s how to reduce the size for easy sharing.

If you prepare Office documents with lots of images, this can make sharing documents difficult because of file size constraints. Images from smartphones can be quite large; which can make it hard to share your document but also take a long time open and scroll through. If you are on a fast Internet connection, it’s no big deal, but for those with a limited metered connection, a document with lots of images can eat through a data plan quickly. Let’s take a look at reducing the file size of images in Microsoft Office documents.

Resize Images in Microsoft Office Documents

Launch Microsoft Word and insert your images. Select a picture, then click the Format context tab that appears. Then Click Compress Pictures within the Adjust group.

Choose the Email radio box, which will automatically reduce the size of the document making it easier for sharing. You can apply this option to select images in the document or all. The Compress Pictures offers other options for different scenarios such as Print and the Web.

As you can see below, the same Word document went from 2 MBs to under 200 KBs.

Resizing images manually can also reduce the size of your documents. Select the picture and use the anchor to resize it. This option is perfect for long documents or presentations with lots of illustrations. You can still deliver your message without compromising the quality of your essential and relevant documents.