Re: Desperately Seeking Graphics in Word Expertise

[Earl Morton <WorkgWords -at- AOL -dot- COM>]

In a message dated 96-12-05 10:58:52 EST, you write:

>>
   A colleague of mine created a Word6 document, 37 pages long, with many
   graphics (screen shots), which is an unwieldy 11 MB.  He inserted the
   graphics by saving them as .gif files and doing a File/Insert Picture in
   Word.  I am sure there must be a way to decrease the size of this doc by
   inserting the graphics in a different way (different format or different
   method).  Does anyone have any ideas?  Thanks very much,
   Gillian
<<

I recently had a very similar situation. My Word 6 document was a little
longer (about 50 pages) and contained several screen captures. When I did the
screen captures the first time, my monitor resolution was set to 800 x 600,
with 16-bit color. This is what I normally use. I changed it to 640 x 480
with 256 colors and redid the screen captures. The file size dropped
significantly. (I believe the number of colors was the significant factor,
not the resolution.) In both cases I inserted the captures by copying them to
the Clipboard from Windows Paint, and just pasting them into the Word
document.

I have been told that using OLE inflates the file size, because it stores the
graphic in two or three formats, so when you want to edit it, it can give the
editor its choice of formats. I have no direct experience with that, though.
I have used the Insert Picture method a few times, but only on one- or
two-page data sheets, so the file size wasn't significant, and I didn't
notice any problems.

Hope this helps!

Earl Morton