Get a PDF under a 200 KB upload limit
For upload limits of 200 KB
E-filing systems, admissions portals and job sites often allow 200 KB for each document you attach, and turn a larger file away without saying by how much. Open the tool from here and it starts on 200 KB: send the file, and next to the usual choices you get the best-looking version under 200 KB, with its exact size.
What fits in 200 KB
A few pages of scanned text, or a page or two with colour, depending on how much is on them. A PDF saved straight from a word processor is often under it already; if yours has nothing worth taking out, the tool tells you so, and where its bytes are, rather than handing back a file that is barely smaller.
If it will not fit
Some files cannot reach 200 KB without a page becoming hard to read, and the tool will not go past that point to reach a number. It tells you the smallest readable size beside the 200 KB you asked for, and offers to split the file into parts of under 200 KB each, compressed first or not, so that a portal that takes several attachments can take all of it.
Compress a PDF to under 200 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.