Bloated Word files .. why is my file so big????

One issue / problem  I have with students creating electronic storyboards where the scan/photograph/cut and paste images is that the Word documents can become very large. Often there are a couple of offending images that are magically very large. So how can we find them to see where the problem is.

Simple solution (use compress pictures)

1. Click on one of the images,


2. Click on the Picture Tools menu (Top right of Word), then


3. Select [Compress Pictures] in the Adjust group on the ribbon bar


4. Choose Apply to All pictures in the document, and [Ok]

Finding the problem images

If you have Word 2007 or 2010 they will save a Word document as a docx file (rather than doc). This is actually just a zip file with a docx extension.  So, to find out your problem images:

1. if your file is a doc file save as a docx, or make a copy of the file if it is a docx.


2. rename the new docx to zip


3. double click the zip file (or open the archive in your un-zipper program)


4. Look in the folder word/media, and you should see the images and their file sizes.


5. Double click on the images to see which ones they are,


6. Remove the images in the original document and resize.