How to compress a pdf file to reduce the size before emailing on Windows?

How to compress a PDF? If you have Microsoft Word installed (which many Windows PCs do), this is the cleanest offline method. It works best if your PDF was originally created from a document, but Word can open most PDF files directly.

How to compress a PDF:

1. Open Word 

2. Go to File > Open and select your PDF file

3. Word will display a message saying it will convert the PDF to an editable document. Click OK

4. After the document opens, go to File > Save As and choose PDF as the format

5. Before saving, click the Options button

6. In the dialog box, select "Minimum size (publishing online)" instead of "Standard"

7. Click OK, then Save

Why this works: Word automatically optimizes images for screen viewing rather than high-quality printing. This can dramatically reduce file size—sometimes from 15MB down to 1-2MB for text-heavy documents.