How to Reduce a PDF to Under 100KB
Some upload forms are unforgiving — a government portal or job application that flatly refuses anything over 100KB. When your PDF is several megabytes, hitting that limit feels impossible. It is not; it just takes the right approach.
Why PDFs get so large
Almost always, the culprit is images. A single high-resolution scan can weigh more than an entire text document. Embedded fonts, uncompressed graphics, and metadata add to it. Knowing that images dominate the file size tells you where to focus.
A practical order of attack
- Compress first. Run the file through the Compress tool at a strong setting. For a text-light or scanned document, this alone often gets you under the limit.
- Lower the scan resolution. If you control the scan, 150 DPI is plenty for on-screen forms and produces dramatically smaller files than 300 or 600 DPI.
- Drop unnecessary pages. Use Remove Pages to delete anything the form does not require — every page you cut is weight removed.
- Split if allowed. If the portal accepts multiple files, splitting a document into parts keeps each one comfortably small.
Balancing size and readability
Aggressive compression can soften images, so check the result is still legible — particularly any small print or signatures. The goal is the smallest file that a human can still read comfortably. For a pure text document you can usually compress hard with no visible difference at all.