Mar 24, 2009

Reducing the file size of your presentation

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What do you do when you end up with a bulky presentation and want to reduce its size?

In this post I will share one technique which will drastically reduce the file size of your presentation. Generally we dont worry about the file size because we can present from our laptop or transfer it to some other system using a USB drive. But if you email a presentation you will have to worry about reducing the file size of your presentation. So here is my simple technique.


Reduce the size of the high resolution images you use in your presentation.


Typically these images are large and hence take up more space. By reducing the size of these images, we can reduce the size of the ppt.


How do we do that?


Copy the image (Ctrl+C)
Delete it

Paste Special as 'Picture (JPEG)'

Do it for all high resolution images

Save the file

Check the file size and be surprised!


By how much will the file size reduce?


A lot.

As a test, I created a small two slide presentation with images of 3.65MB on each slide. The pptx file (in MS PowerPoint 2007) came to 1.43MB. After applying this technique, the size of the pptx came down by 87% to just 184KB.

The reduction would be more if you have used more images in the presentation. If you are worried about the image getting blurred or distorted, don't be. On-screen quality will not at all be affected. However, I would suggest not using this technique for images which are smaller (under 250KB) as the incremental reduction in file size will not be high.


What do you do to reduce the file size of your presentation? Just before you are going to mail it?

3 comments :

  1. People who share/send screenshots (either in doc or ppts) regularly would have observed that JPEG format would give a considerable size reduction compared to a BMP file but gives the image a smudgy feel, especially the text portions in the image.

    An alternative to JPEG for these purposes is the PNG file format which gives the clarity of a BMP file with even better file size reduction than JPEG.

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  2. Found this information on reducing PPT file size very helpful. Thanks.

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  3. You're a life-saver: I just managed to submit my report on time, after reducing the size of the file, due to your advice. Thanks :)

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