What are the best ways to
- ensure a small filesize for Microsoft Word documents when starting from scratch
- reduce the size of existing Microsoft Word documents
using only tools available in the Office suite?
(There's enough 15MB 3 page documents going around in the world)
Best Answer
Most of these will only help with existing documents, but saving as the Word 2007 DOCX format will help with new documents.
Word 2007
Compress Images
There are then various options for deleting cropped areas, lowering the resolution etc.
Save as DOCX
The new DOCX format is much smaller as it's basically a ZIP file wrapper. Try renaming a .docx file to .zip to look inside if you're curious.
Remove Hidden Data
See this article from Microsoft Remove hidden data and personal information from Office documents
Word 2003
Compress Images
Remove Hidden Data
Download the Office 2003/XP Add-in: Remove Hidden Data - "With this add-in you can permanently remove hidden data and collaboration data, such as change tracking and comments, from Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft PowerPoint files."