Windows 10: Compress PDF files

Hello,
Have lot of pdf files on my disk, I have read about software to compress these files.
1. Is there some program (free if possible) to do it ?
2. Is the compression effective (in percent), so to start installing the program ?
3. After compression, are the files still readable ?
Answers will be appreciated
Thanks


:)

 

Why are files printed with "Print to PDF" so huge?

Hi Anthony,

Sorry for the misunderstanding. I will be glad to answer your query.

Please be informed that Adobe has a compression options to compress images in PDF documents it creates while Microsoft Print to PDF does not compress the files. This is the reason why the file size differs between the two.

Hope this answers your query.

If you have any Windows related queries, do let us know. We will be glad to help.

 

windows 10 - how to scan docs as pdf

Hi,

You may scan a document as a PDF file if you have a program installed that allows you to create PDF's from the scanner. However, you may also

zip or compress a file or a folder that you'd like to attach to an email to take up less storage space.

Do let us know should you have further queries.

 

Its possible to compress pdf's I assumed PDF' files are designed to use the least amount of space possible there are lots of "FREE" services online most are average. personally i wouldn't use them, all tho i have used some to convert files

 

Google may be our friend:
Can PDF files be compressed? - Google Search
I'm not sure which of the URLs in that search will be useful to you.

 

Do you want to compress without loosing any quality, or would you accept a lower quality and/or resolution?

Images in pdfs can be saved in a lossless form or use jpeg compression, for jpegs the level of compression can be increased at the cost of some loss of quality. The image resolution could also be reduced to save space. Any compression software would likely use these techniques to reduce the size of the file. Whether you notice the difference would depend on how heavily the compression was applied.

For compression that leaves the original file untouched there are two options in Windows itself - ntfs file compression or 'send to a compressed (zipped) folder'. If you have Libre Office or similar you already have software that can open a pdf for editing and export it in a lower quality form.

As an experiment I downloaded an illustrated manual in pdf form. The original file size was 17.2MB.

ntfs compression:
Right-click on file, select properties, click the 'Advanced...' button and tick 'compress contents to save disk space'.
After compression File Explorer still shows the original file size, but its Properties shows 'size on disk: 16.4MB'. The data in the file is unaltered and the file can be opened as normal.

Send to zipped folder:
The zip folder produced was 14.7MB. Windows can open a zipped folder like any other folder so you can still easily read the pdf in its original form.

Reduced resolution and increased compression with Libre Office:
Opened in Libre Office Writer and exported to pdf, image resolution reduced from 300dpi to 150dpi, jpeg compression quality lowered to 33%. The exported pdf was 5.32MB. The loss of image quality was unnoticeable but some formatting changes were introduced, particularly in the alignment of the table of chapters. Such problems may be found in other pdf compression software, so beware.

 

Hello,
Thanks for the answer.
I tried the "ntfs compression" technique, the pdf file was almost not changed in size, I will try to 'zip' all pdf files and see what I get.
2. For the first time I got in my mail a private message from the forum, it was very strange for me. After solving the message, my answer to this is thanks for the message, but I say thanks-no.
THanks.

 

File Explorer will still show the original size of the file. To see how much it has shrunk, right-click on it and select 'Properties'. This shows two sizes, the important one is the 'Size on disk' which should now be smaller that the file size. How much smaller depends on how easy it is to compress that pdf, some will compress more than others.

 

PDF's are usually in a compressed format to start with. I don't think most are going to compress well, if at all.

 

Even though a compressed file into a .zip format will not show much shrinkage it is important to me as some forums or sites allow only certain formats and .zip is pretty much universal, useful to meet those requirements.