How to Reduce the Size of a Word Document

Microsoft Word is a word-processing program that manages text and graphic images. Using Word to create and store documents takes up space on a hard drive, but documents containing nothing but text can be reduced in size by more than two-thirds. Word documents with images are able to be reduced to less than half their original size for the sake of saving space on a computer's hard drive.

Instructions

1. Save a Word document in an accessible location like the My Documents system folder. Click "File" on the menu bar. Click "Save as" from the list that appears. Click the "Store in" drop-down menu and select "My Documents." Type the document name into the "File name" box and click the "Save" button.

2. Send the Word document to a compressed, zipped folder. Open the My Documents system folder by double-clicking the desktop icon. Locate the saved document and right-click on its icon. Roll the cursor over the "Send to" option on the list that appears. Click the "Compressed (zipped) folder" selection. That will save a copy of the file at a reduced size.

3. Remove the original-sized file. Right-click the original file icon in the My Documents folder. Click the "Delete" option from the list. Click the "Yes" button in the appearing dialog box to confirm your delete command.

4. Reopen the compressed file at its original size for printing. Right-click the zipped folder icon containing the file. Click the "Extract all" option to open the extraction wizard. Click "Next" in the dialog box to continue, then click "Next" on the select destination box. Make sure there is a check mark next to "Show extracted files," and then click the "Finish" button. The folder will open with a copy of the file at its original size inside.