Compress a PDF to under 100 KB
For forms that stop at 100 KB
Application portals and online forms often refuse any attachment over 100 KB, and a phone's scan of a single page is usually several times that. Open the tool from here and it starts with 100 KB already chosen: send the file, and beside the usual sizes you get the best-looking version of it that is under 100 KB, with its size and a close look at its text before you take it.
How close it can get
A hundred kilobytes is small. It holds a page or two of scanned text at a modest resolution, and seldom several pages of colour. The tool lowers the resolution and the quality of the page images a step at a time, then searches for the quality that lands just under the limit, and stops where the words would start to become hard to read. If your file cannot reach 100 KB above that point, it says how small it can get while every word still reads, next to the 100 KB you asked for, and offers to split it into parts that are each under 100 KB.
Check it before you send it
The preview on each card is the smallest text in your file, at 100% zoom, beside the same place in your original. If the form will be read by a person at the other end, that is the piece to look at before you choose.
Compress a PDF to under 100 KB — it opens the tool, with nothing to install.
What it never does
- It never makes a page harder to read to reach a size. Every page of every file it offers is compared with yours at reading size, and a setting that falls below its measured limit for legibility is not offered, whatever size was asked for.
- It never turns text or drawings into pictures. The page images are made smaller and the file's structure is tidied; text stays text, sharp and searchable.
- It never makes an image larger, and never saves one at a higher quality than it already had, which would add bytes and lose detail at once.
When it says no
A file of text and fonts, with few page images, has little to give: the tool says so, and says where its bytes are, rather than offer a file that is barely smaller. A scan already at a low resolution may have no detail left to give without becoming hard to read, and it says that too. A file with a password asks for it. It takes files of up to 100 MB.
The record
The smaller file says how it was made: which setting, the resolution and quality each image was saved at, which images were left as they were, and the sizes before and after. A document you corrected here becomes a new document when it is compressed, because compressing changes the pixels its correction was checked on; the check and the certificate stay with the one you corrected. The sizes made for your file are deleted an hour after they are made, or as soon as you choose one, and the file you choose is deleted after 90 days, or whenever you erase it.