When size matters

Dear TPH,
I use Microsoft Word and have found that some of the documents are often very large even without any graphics. These are simple, text-only documents. Is there a way to make these files smaller without "zipping" them?
– H.F.

Dear H.F.,
With one simple question, you have just now proven beyond any reasonable doubt that "size matters". With it, you just ended many secret debates and all the controversy that surrounded an issue that perhaps dates as far back as the dawn of 'human thought and curiosity'.

We come across many size issues when we sit in front of the computer. We want small, lightweight computers with large monitors, large hard disks and small file sizes. It is ironic that a single MS Word document can be as large as several mega-bytes when the founder of Microsoft claimed in 1981 that he couldn't foresee any reason why a PC would need more that 640 kilo-bytes of memory!

Getting more to the point; one of the features of MS Word is the Fast Save option. Fast saves are done by Word to make saving documents faster. The only problem is that it adds information to the Word formatted document which increases the actual file size each time you edit it. If you want to decrease the size of the Word document, one way of doing it is by disabling Fast Saves.

To do this, click the Tools menu and select Options, then click the Save tab and uncheck the ''Allow fast saves'' check box and then click OK. Another thing that contributes to large file sizes is heavily formatted text.

The more changes in the appearance of the document, such as different fonts and font sizes as well as colours, the more the file will grow in size. If you simplify the text, you will decrease the size of the final document. I always recommend that you use only the standard formatting provided in the relevant document templates in MS Word (File>New> and select "On My Computer" in the "Templates" section – under the "New Document" options on the Task Pane)

Wishing you many happy hours of writing and smaller file sizes, I will remain

Yours always,

– TPH