Word File Sizes

Hi Dave:

148 KB minimum size is not bad, I wouldn't bother chasing it. The smallest
you can get it to is about 40 KB, but it won't last.

To reduce the size, Quit Word and re-name your Normal Template. Word will
create a fresh totally-blank Normal when it next starts. Any new document
created from that is a copy of Normal, so will be the same size.

But as soon as you start to add styles, autotext, autocorrect, or all manner
of other things, your Normal template will start to grow.

Word saves literally thousand of pieces of information in the document.
Essentially, the information comes under the heading of "Plans to build a
document". Rather than store all of the formatting within each paragraph of
text, Word stores a set of formatting definitions in the document, then
calls the ones it needs for each piece of text with a single binary number.

While the "overhead" is about 140-odd KB, it does not grow. The amount of
formatting stored for a document containing one character will be 140 kB.
The amount of formatting for a 500-page document and a 5,000 page document
will be exactly the same: about 140 kb.

It needs all this information just to format and display and build a single
page. But if it stored a fresh copy of the information for "each" page, the
document file size would rapidly spin out of control. This way is a lot
more efficient in the long run.

Hope this helps

On 23/11/06 9:07 AM, in article dave-A07958.22070122112006 RemoveThis @news.demon.co.uk,
"Dave" <dave RemoveThis @DavidOSmith.co.uk> wrote:

> Does anyone know of a way I can restrict/reduce the size of a word
> document? I'm running Office 2004 on an Intel Mac Mini under 10.4.8.
>
> I have a 50 word document that runs to 148K in size. I just find that
> ridiculous. I can't seem to get any document under 100K. What the heck
> does Word put in there?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Dave

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John McGhie <john RemoveThis @mcghie.name>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410