Do you deal a lot with PDF files at your job? If so you’ve probably run across files that are gigantic in size. This can be a real pain, especially if your exchange server account has a small storage limit. 1 or 2 high resolution PDF’s can max out your inbox in short order.
Most people don’t know that there is a very easy way to reduce the file size of a PDF, if you have Acrobat Professional. Just go to the advanced menu, and click on PDF Optimizer. This will bring up a dialog box, listing image settings. Here you can reduce the resolution of images in PDF’s (which more often than not, are the culprit behind why the file size is gigantic). If you don’t intend to print the pdf, but just have someone look at it on screen, you can reduce the resolution of all images down to 72 dpi. (in some cases I stick with 120 dpi if the PDF dimensions are small, as Acrobat has a habit of zooming in on small documents). Go ahead and leave all the other settings on their default, then hit OK. Acrobat will prompt you to save the new file you’re about to create, I usually just tack on “-optimized” to the end of the name, just in case I need the hi-res file later on.
I’ve shared this technique with my team, and it’s been given the loving nickname of the “PDF Diet”. It’s not uncommon for 10 mb files to be reduced to a few 100k, it works wonders and you won’t have to worry about getting the stink eye from your co-workers next time for maxing out their in-box. : )
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Do you have a feature on here where you can email an article to someone?? That would rawk.
In the meantime, I’ll send this to Michelle. She’ll find this useful.
That’s a great idea! Right now you can, “re-tweet” my posts by using the Tweet link to the right, but that would send it to everyone who follows you. I’ll need to look into a way to forward my posts to 1 specific person. Stay tuned!
I’ve added a “tell a friend” option to the site on a trial basis. Let me know what you think.