How to Compress a PDF for Emailing?

PDFs are a commonly used document format since it preserves the file’s original formatting. However, as popular as the PDF format is, it’s not always the smallest document size. As such, we look at how to compress the file using an online tool and other software. Read further to find three easy steps for document compression using a PDF editing extension.

What Does It Mean to Compress a File? 

File compression refers to when you reduce the size of a file. Depending on your PDF document’s number of pages, it might result in a large document size. You can compress it to make the PDF smaller, but remember that it comes with risks. When you compress a document, it often results in a lower-quality document or even a corrupted file. That’s why using the right online extension and tool for file compression is essential. Using the right tool makes it possible to resize your document without damaging the quality.

Why Would You Want to Compress a PDF?

While a PDF is one of the most convenient formats, it can become much less convenient if the size is too large. The most common way to share a PDF is by email as an attachment. However, most emails, like Gmail, have a limit on the maximum size of an attachment. It generally falls around 25MB, and any file larger than that will be sent as a link instead. One way to ensure you send the document as an attachment is to compress it to a smaller size. Larger files also take up more space on your computer or mobile device and take longer to download or transfer to local or external hard drives.

Best PDF Editing Tool

While there are many good editing tools online, a great free tool available on any device is PDFplatform. Available as a web-based site, it offers a user-friendly interface and meets all your PDF editing needs. Its features, which are all available for free, include the following.

• Split: The PDF splitter allows you to extract specific pages from a PDF file and create as many separate PDFs as you want.
• Merge: You can easily combine two or more files using this function.
• Compress: This feature allows you to reduce your PDF size without any loss in quality compared to the original document.
• Sign: Create a custom signature and electronically sign any legally-binding document online.
• Convert: The conversion functions make it easy to convert your PDFs into a Word format or other formats into a PDF.
• Edit: This tool allows you to edit and change the text in a PDF document that’s usually fixed in place, add images, and more.
• Unlock: For increased security, it’s possible to lock and unlock PDFs to ensure the document is protected when you share it.

How to Compress a PDF?

Compressing a document is effortless with PDFplatform, as the site is designed to be easy to navigate and use. The following three steps will show you how to compress a PDF within seconds.

Step 1: Open the compression tool

On PDFplatform, select the “Compress PDF” option to start. It’s available in the website’s header or if you scroll down the page.

Step 2: Select your file

The second step is clicking on the “Select files” green button. You can browse and select the PDF you want from your computer or mobile device on the pop-up window. After clicking on the selected document, click open to add it to the compression box.

Step 3: Download your file

Once you’ve opened the PDF file, the compression process will start automatically. When it’s done, you’ll see your file’s new size and the percentage of how much the size has been reduced compared to the original file size. You can click the “Download” button to receive your file and enjoy a smaller size that’s easier to share via email and with no quality loss.

Final Thoughts

We all know the pains of realizing a file is too large to email as an attachment. Size limits are always imposed when you use Gmail or another email extension. File compression using an online tool is a fast and easy way to compress your PDF so that you can email it with no worries. Use PDFplatform if you want to compress your file for free, and experience no loss in quality as you reduce the PDF size. With the online PDFplatform compression tool, you can rest assured that your PDF won’t be too large to send, whether you email the file using Gmail or another sharing extension.