One of the biggest pet peeves of dealing with a PDF file is the large file size. There’s nothing worse than an email stuck in your outbox because of a large PDF attachment—unless, of course, it’s a slow PDF download from the web.

However, you don’t need to worry there are a number of ways that you can use to reduce PDF files to the required size. Here are 5 tricks to reduce the size of a PDF file:

Method 1: Using Adobe Official PDF Compression Tool

Adobe has developed a free-to-use online tool to compress PDF images and reduce pdf size without losing quality. Here’s how to use it:

1. Visit Adobe PDF Compressor Tool HERE

2. Click on “Select a File” to upload the pdf file.

3. Select the compression level from High, Medium, to Low compression depending on your requirement. And click on Compress.

4. The compression will take a few seconds, and the compressed pdf file will be available to download.

Method 2: Using PDF NOW to compress PDF anywhere

If you don’t have Adobe Acrobat on your laptop, you can take the browser’s help to reduce PDF file size without losing its quality. You can also use this method to reduce PDF files on mobile phones. There are several options out there, but PDF NOW is the easiest to use. It's a truly free App for you to complete any PDF task anywhere anytime.

- To reduce PDF file size, launch PDF NOW app on your iPhone or iPad. and select the ‘Compress‘ option from the home screen

- Next, ‘Choose Files‘ you wish to compress; Or you can download it from your Google Drive and Dropbox before step 1.

- Once the file is chosen, you’ll get 3 options to compress the files, “High Compression level”, “Middle Compression level” or “Low Compression level” . The first option gives you the lowest size of the file, but it does take a hit on the quality and comes with a paywall

- Then click " Compress". It can be totally free to compress. Give it a try.

- Wait for the compression to complete and share your file. It's that simple.

The process doesn’t require a sign-in, and if you’re worried about security, All documents are stored locally on users' devices, they are not available to us. Feel safe to use it.

Method 3: Using “ilovepdf” Online Tool

This is yet another simple online tool that can be used to perform multiple functions for pdf files. Here you can reduce the size of a pdf file as well as convert jpeg to pdf, word file to pdf, and many more tools to repair and modify pdf files. Here is how to use this tool:

1. Head over to ilovepdf website

2. Click on “Select PDF files” button and upload the pdf file that you would like to compress. You can even directly select pdf files from Google Drive or Dropbox.

3. Once the pdf file is uploaded you will get three options on the right. These are Extreme, Recommended and Light compression. Select the desired type of compression and click on ‘Compress PDF‘ button at the bottom.

4. The compression process will take a few seconds to minutes depending on the size of the file. And once done, your file will be automatically downloaded and ready to go.

With an understanding of these methods via this article, we certainly do hope that your PDF compression experience is hassle-free.

Method 4: Try to avoid scanning PDFs

Most people think that in order to create a PDF or combine several documents into one large PDF file, they need to print all the documents and scan them together. However, what they don’t realize is that files that are converted electronically are usually larger in size compared to scans.

Method 5: Convert the PDF into a ZIP file

You can compress your document by converting it into a ZIP file with the steps below:

1. Open your file explorer.

2. Find the PDF you want to compress.

3. Right-click the file.

4. Select "Send to."

5. Choose "Compressed (zipped) folder."

Converting PDF files in this way can also help if you have several large documents to send to the same person or if you want to store them together.

Method 6: Reduce the size when you save in Word

In Word, to convert a document to PDF, you use the Save As option. This option generally produces a fairly small file, depending on the number of images in your document. However, if you find that your Word-converted PDF is still too large, there is a further option in Word that will produce a significantly smaller file. Here’s how to use it:

Open the Word document you are going to convert to PDF. Click on the File button and then Save As. In the Save as type menu, select PDF and enter your preferred file name. Here’s the extra step: where it says Optimize for at the bottom of the dialog box, select Minimum size (publishing online).