Determine Your Document’s Purpose
How you approach file reduction depends on what you are using your document for. Microsoft provides recommendations for pixels per inch (ppi) settings. When following the steps below, select your image resolution as follows. For printing, select 220 ppi (note that the dialog box will also guide you in this, by labeling this ppi level “Best for printing”). For viewing on screen, select 150 ppi (“Best for viewing on screen”). For sending electronically in an email, select 96 ppi (“Best for sending in an email”).
Compress a Single Image in Microsoft Office
To make basic changes to your image sizes, you don’t even need to leave the program interface. Here’s how:
Compress All Pictures in a Microsoft Office Document
Follow the same steps as above to change all images in your file at once, with one difference. For step three above, you can instead opt for applying the compression to all images in the document.
How to Restore Compressed Files to Original Quality
One of the great things about file compression within Microsoft Office is, you should be able to restore any compressed file to their original clarity and quality. As a result, users should plan on much larger file size. This comes down to turning off file compression. To keep the maximum picture quality, you can turn off compression for all pictures in a file. However, turning off compression can cause very large file sizes without an upper limit on the size of the file.
Additional Considerations
Note that Microsoft advises: “If your document is saved in the older .doc file format, the Reduce File Size option will not be available on the File menu. To use the Reduce File Size option, save your document in the newer .docx file format.” You may also be interested in these image-focused resources since pictures make such an impact in Word, PowerPoint, Publisher, OneNote, and even Excel documents.
