My PDF file is large. How do I reduce file size? Compress PDF?

Modified on Mon, 18 Jul 2022 at 01:23 PM

Optimize your PDF files and keep file size small

For best viewer experience, keep the file size of your PDF as small as possible. Remove multimedia items, resize images before including them in the PDF (scaling inside the PDF does not change the actual image file size), and most importantly, keep the document short. PDFs are not designed for small screens and if designed poorly, require horizontal scrolling, which makes reading the PDF tedious on small screens for mobile platform users.

Tips about compression

Free Online Tools

Acrobat Pro - Save as Mobile Optimized

Use the PDF Optimizer, built into Acrobat Pro, to optimize the PDF for mobile. Compress images and downsample all images to 72ppi, don’t embed fonts that are not needed, etc.
Learn more about PDF Optimizer Options (Adobe Acrobat DC) or review Adobe’s "Tips for creating a mobile friendly PDF."

Or watch the Acrobat XI tutorial:

If you are using Adobe Acrobat 9, the following steps may work for you:

  1. Open the document in Adobe Acrobat Pro
  2. File > Save As
  3. In the save window, look for Format and select Adobe PDF Files, Optimized
  4. Select the Settings button – you can further optimize from there or click OK to save your optimized file

Remove Multimedia

Multimedia in PDFs is great on normal computers, however, mobile PDFs on different devices don’t necessarily display multimedia objects. Removing the multimedia or, if it’s linked, simply adding a “poster” image will help (a poster is simply an image that will be displayed instead of the multimedia object).