One of the ways you can add extra detail to your Microsoft Word documents is by including images. For example, images can be a great way of helping to explain a complicated or lengthy process, making it easier to understand. One of the problems with images though is that they tend to take up a lot of storage space.
One way to reduce the file size of an image is to reduce its resolution. Another option is to use a process called compression. Compression is a complex process that analyses files to identify inefficiencies in how the file is saved. There are two types of compression, lossless and lossy. Lossless compression uses compression techniques that don’t result in any data being lost, allowing for the original picture to be recreated with no loss of detail. Lossy compression generally uses more aggressive compression techniques by reducing some of the data in the image, this can result in visible reductions in the quality of the image such as visual artifacts.
How to compress images in Word
Microsoft Word includes a function to compress images in a document so that your document takes up less space. To be able to access this feature, you need to click on an image then switch to the “Picture Format” tab in the top bar. Once in the “Picture Format” tab, click on the “Compress Pictures” icon in the top right corner of the “Adjust” sub-section.
In the Compress Pictures popup window, the first two checkboxes configure if the changes you make apply to all pictures or just the selected one and if the cropped areas of pictures should be deleted respectively. Below that are a series of radio buttons that allow you to choose what image quality you want to use. By default, Word keeps all imported images at their default resolution, even if that is unnecessarily high. “High fidelity” applies a lossless compression algorithm to reduce space while not losing any quality. The other options progressively lose quality as you go down the list but reduce the file size of the affected images more significantly.
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