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Word 97 - creeping file size?

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by bmckenzie 1 view

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I'm running Word 97 SR-2 on NT 4.0 and working with screenshots a lot. I used to be able to create and edit files containing multiple graphics with no problem, but since my HD crashed and Windows and Office had to be reinstalled, suddenly the file sizes are becoming insanely huge (a 4 page doc is 2.4 MB, a 66 page doc is 50 MB!). This only happens on my machine, not to anyone else in the office. I turned off fast saves, autorecover and background saves, & checked for viruses. When I zip thefiles they become tiny (~ 500-800k). I don't know what else it could be. Any suggestions?

7 replies

by jsgibbs

I believe that if you open the file(s). Then select: file->save as-> and highlight the name of file that you currently have opened in your editor, then click save. You will get the warning message that says something to the effect "replace exsisting file with......" Tell it yes and the newly saved file should be of a more reasonable size. I had this very problem on an user's machine a few months back, and can't remember for certain, but I think that the above steps resolved it. Maybe I saved it to a completely new file name, but you get the idea. Let me know if this works........

by bmckenzie

Sorry, I forgot to mention that I already tried this (both with a new name and with replacing the original). The first time I did it the file was slightly smaller (by a few hundred kbytes), but any subsequent attempts did not change it at all. Thanks anyway though. BMcKenzie

by peyison

Don't know if this will help, or not, but one thing that I've found with Word is that if you import a graphic and resize it within Word, it can really bloat the Word file. Seems like if you import a .GIF file and resize it in Word, Word will convertit to a .BMP. Since BMPs are much larger than GIFs the file is a lot larger than if you didn't resize it. I always resize images outside of Word and then bring them in.

So... what I'm wondering is if there is a graphic converter or something thatdidn't get installed - or some other reason that Word would be converting graphics to BMP.

Hope this helps. Good luck.

by bmckenzie

I'm not sure what they're being imported as - I'm grabbing them as screenshots by pressing Alt-Print Screen and pasting them directly into Word. But I am resizing them by right-clicking on them and choosing Format Picture>Size. Any other editing like cropping or whatever I do in MS Photo Editor. I have also tried replacing the graphics with GIFs but this was before I edited them. The thing I don't understand is that I used to be able to do exactly what I'm doing now with no problems - should I be looking at my Office 97 disk to install additional converters? Thanks.

by bmckenzie

It turns out the answer was posted in a discussion elsewhere on this site - you have to paste the screenshot as a picture (Edit>Paste Special - choose the Picture option) as opposed to an MS Office Drawing Document (the default) or enhanced metafile. This reduces the size of the document to 200k - 2 MB (depending on how many pictures you have). But my 50 MB file from before is now only 2.3 MB, so it's definitely worth the hassle of Paste Special.

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