Compress PDF - How To Guide

Learn how to use compress pdf. 100% free, no installation required.

Most PDFs that will not fit an attachment limit are large for one reason: high-resolution images. Compression re-encodes those images and strips unused data. Here is how to get the size down without ending up with a document nobody can read.

  1. Upload Files

    Add the PDF you need to shrink. You can add several at once if you are clearing out a whole folder.

  2. Set Options

    Pick a compression level. Balanced suits almost everything; use the stronger setting only when a hard size limit forces it, and check the result.

  3. Download

    Download and open the file before sending it. Confirm the images are still acceptable at the size you chose.

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Tips & Best Practices

  • Text-only PDFs barely shrink — there are no images to re-encode. If a text document is huge, the cause is usually embedded fonts, not compression settings.
  • Scanned documents compress the most, often by 50-80%, because scanner output is typically far higher resolution than anyone needs on screen.
  • Compressing an already-compressed file again gains almost nothing and only degrades it further. Go back to the original.
  • If size is being driven by one enormous photograph, extracting and replacing that image beats compressing the whole document.