E-mailing large Word 2000 files

[JayE]

Hi everyone,

One of my colleague regularly e-mails Word 2000 files to prospective clients, middle to large sized companies.

They used to be quite small, containing mainly text with coloured headings, bullet points, etc.

Now they contain photos, the file sizes can be quite large, usually over 1MB and even up to 2MB at times.

I believe they take some time to send and must take a while for the receiving network to download.

What's the easiest way to reduce the file size to a more manageable figure? I know it could be zipped, but this relies on the recipient having ZIP or similar to extract. I am seriously considering a PDF file creator, as I understand the file sizes are very small. I know Adobe Acrobat 5.0 but this is - I think - about £150, which I don't think I can justify. Are there cheaper ones that create PDF files for e-maliing? I've seen one called 5D PDF Creator (Niknak), is is any good?

Can you tell me more about PDF files - does the conversion from Word doc to PDF lose any formatting/features as far as the recipient is concerned when he/she views on screen and/or prints?

I value your advice.

Regards,
Jay/UK

 

[rjkrash]

You might want to try using Winzip Self-Extractor. The end user doen't need to have winzip on their machine. The file comes as a self extracting executable.

BTW to get around the .exe attachment security of Outlook you can attach the file with with a bogus extension like YourFileName.xxx then tell the recipient to rename the file to YourFileName.exe.

Post back with success or failure resolving issue(s).
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[cazulp]

JayE
Rjkrash is right, use a Zipper that includes the un-zipper. Adobe PDF conversion from Word only reduces the file size by 5-10 % at best. Although it makes the text look prettier, the image focus gets messed up and they dont look as good. The only time you would want to use Adobe if if you want to add protection to the document.

 

[rzw]

you can get pdf's for free. Search the net for freepdf, ghostscript and redmon and you'll get all you have to know.
Or look at this:

http://www.webxd.com/zipguy/freepdf.htm

regards Rudy

 

[yizhar]

HI.

Another option to consider, if you're using a large scale of file transfer - use other tecnique like posting the file to a web/ftp server then sending only a link by email.

This requires technical and data security arangements, but is a better way for large amount of data to be handled by email.

I also agree with using ZIP or other compressing utility.
Also when you scan the pictures, adjusting some settings can have a great impact on resulting file size.

Bye
Yizhar Hurwitz

http://come.to/yizhar

http://teachers.sivan.co.il/yizhar