My inbox isn't your storage

Beware, I'm engaging rant mode. But I've brought a solution too!

Background

During my working life, I've always had to deal with Microsoft Office applications. It can be a pain (especially formatting), but admittedly gets the job done.

I've also always had mailbox restrictions. 500MB, 1GB, 5GB. Space grows, but the limit is there. And getting told that you're at your limit is a first-world problem I could do without.

Yes, you can fix by archiving or deleting. But that just moves the problem. And the problem can be reduced very simply by the author of the offending bucket of bits.

Bloatware

Office applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) are horrid at handling images. Most of the internal representations of images are actually held as bitmap files. And bitmaps are a horrid, inefficient format.

However, there is a solution. And the good news is this works across the range of desktop Office Applications on both Mac and Windows.

Let's check the outcome first.

How helpful can this be?

I was sent a Powerpoint deck contained one big image on the cover page and multiple smaller images throughout the document. Because it was Powerpoint, there were also a bunch of images in the Master Slides, all of which weren't used by this particular presentation.

• Original Size: 3.6MB
• After Compressed Images: 628KB
• After unused Master Slides with images removed: 484KB
• File size reduction: 13% of original

Sweet!

What is this magic?

Office apps contain a magic button, hidden away, called Compress Images. Here's how it works.

Main Image Compression (Powerpoint, Word and Excel)

1. Select an image (any image) in your presentation, and you'll get a new tab appear, called Picture Format.

2. In the toolbar, go to Picture Format, and Click Compress Images

3. In the Picture Quality drop down select Email 96 ppi (unless you're expecting to print) and check Apply to: All Images in Files

4. Click OK

Don't forget your Powerpoint Master Slides

1. Click View -> Slide Master

2. Remove all image-based slides in the template that you don't use

Save the doc, enjoy the reduced file size! We'll all be grateful for the saved space.