RE: Need tips on reducing Word file size

[SIANNON -at- VISUS -dot- JNJ -dot- com]

Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong here, but isn't the filesize 
mystery the product of a combination of the following factors (?):

-- Windows 2000 graphics handling:  
   Windows 2000 handles graphics differently from other 
   (at least previous)Windows versions. (I remember having 
   to save a Word doc from W2K to '97 format for a copy center 
   to process it, and it went from a little over 2 Mb to over 
   20 Mb, due to the embedded screenshots and tables and such.)
   One little glitch I once found with an early version of W2K 
   resulted in a viable screenshot showing up as a 0 Kb file,
   supposedly due to the "threading" thing W2K does with its 
   metadata storage.  I think this contributes to the "how does
   a 4 Mb graphic fit in a 2 Mb file" question.

-- Word's graphics filters:
   Word uses different graphic filters to "translate" imported 
   graphics into whatever the embedded binary format is (I 
   remember dealing with it when I had the painful conversion 
   of a 50+ page manual from Quark Xpress on a Mac to MSWord 
   on a Win'95 PC).  Aside from using different conversion methods,
   I suspect a lot of the images are decompressed in the process. 
   What I'm curious about is where the data for a graphic is 
   stored in a Word file...if it's a compression algorithm, part 
   of the multi-threading thing, or what.

-- Vector vs. bitmap conversion mistakes
   IIRC, Word pastes even vector graphics as bitmaps unless 
   expressly told to paste them as either an EMF or WMF. That 
   may be one part of the Visio problem (I get smaller filesizes 
   when I use Paste Special --> Picture(Enhanced Metafile) than 
   if I just paste as a picture...I do have to reset the image 
   to In Line With Text, and resize it, but it's worth the 
   extra steps)

-- Embedding OLE metadata
   If a graphical element is copied from one of Microsoft's OLE-
   enabled programs, and pasted directly in, instead of using 
   Paste Special and specifying a format, the metadata (code) 
   used to call the program from which the graphical element 
   came is also stored in the document file (thus the heavier 
   corruption rate of docs with many embedded Excel grids, 
   Powerpoint or Visio graphics, etc.)

Again, these are just things I've stumbled across when I've tried to figure 
out "Why the &*%)$ is it doing this?" during my own jousts with Word. I 
have no quantifiable proof these are the significant culprits I've felt 
them to be, although I would welcome either confirmation or rebuttal on any 
of these potential contributiing factors.

Shauna


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