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How to Compress a PDF for Email and Upload Forms
Published 24 October 2026 by Adawat
Many email services limit attachments to roughly 20 to 25 MB, and upload forms often allow much less. A scanned document of only a few pages can easily go over that. Here is how to shrink it.
Why PDFs get so big
Scans and photos are stored as large images. A text-only PDF is usually small, while a ten-page scan at high resolution can be many megabytes.
Steps
- Open Compress PDF and choose your file.
- Pick a quality: Smallest, Balanced or Best quality.
- Press Compress and save the new file.
- Check that the text is still easy to read.
Choosing the quality
Start with Balanced. If the file is still too large, try Smallest. If the text looks blurry, go back to Best quality.
Good to know
- The tool rebuilds each page as an image, so text can no longer be selected or searched. Always keep your original file.
- If the result is not smaller, the tool tells you and does not save it. That usually means the file is already well compressed.
- You can also remove blank pages with Delete PDF pages, or send only the pages needed with Split PDF.
Try it now: Compress PDFOpen the tool