How to compress files sizes of photos or graphics in Microsoft Word Documents

Large long documents can cause large files sizes especially if you have added numerous photos or graphics. Microsoft Word and all Microsoft Office products offer a feature to allow you to automatically compress file sizes of individual or multiple photos/graphics which have been added to your document.

To compress a photo or graphic do the following steps:

Open Microsoft Word, click start then type “Word”. Once Word Desktop app shows up, click Word icon to open.

Within Word click on Insert tab, then Pictures.

Go to the folder from which you will be selecting a picture or graphic. Left mouse click on the picture or graphic to select it, then click the Insert button.

The photo or graphic you selected will be added to your document. Select the photo or graphic if not already selected. The Pictures Tools > Format tab on the ribbon will be displayed.

From the adjust group, click on Compress Pictures icon.

The Compress Pictures menu box will appear. From this menu you have the option to select which pictures in the document you will apply compression to, and your target output, or quality you want the image to maintain. You have the options of Print (220ppi), Web (150ppi), or E-Mail (96ppi).

The term ppi refers to pixels per inch. In the example 96 ppi, this means there are 96 pixels or dots per inch. The lower ppi the less dots per inch and lower quality, the higher the ppi the higher dots per inch and higher quality. Find out more here.

If you only wish to compress the current photograph selected, ensure the Apply only to this picture checkbox is ticked.

To apply compression to ALL photos or graphics within the document untick this box. This will save you A LOT of time if you have many pictures within the one document – there is no need to compress each picture individually.

There is a second checkbox in the Compression options for Delete cropped areas of pictures, if you select this option, which by default is ticked, any photos or graphics you have cropped using the function within Word will be permanently cropped meaning that you cannot go back later and undo the cropping, instead you would need to delete the picture from the document and insert it again.

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