Word – Why is Word 2011 saving 2Mb PDF files when the docx is only 136kb

Today I have the same problem with exporting Word 2007 equations in PDF using save as -> PDF. Recently I was using doPDF to export Cyrillic texts and I decided to try it with the word equations. It worked perfectly!

Referencing another forum discussion in acrobat users blog I found the real word solution - simply load the “Files for Complex Script and right-to-left languages” found under the "Languages" tab in Regional and Language Options in the control panel

You will need a Windows XP SP3 CD and restart. The Saving the docx as PDF after this manipulation works perfectly!

This is still a problem with Word 2016. Perhaps not the same as the OP had, but it's still there: start with a 1 page 20 KB document, save as PDF, get a 300 KB PDF.

I can't say why Word does this, but there is an easy way to minify these PDF files: install GhostScript, then run the following command:

gswin64c.exe -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -dPDFSETTINGS=/screen -dNOPAUSE -dQUIET -dBATCH "-sOutputFile=%2" "%1"

where %1 is the input PDF and %2 is the output PDF. Turns that 300 KB PDF into a 40 KB PDF. Still not as small as CutePDF (that one managed about 30 KB for the same document) but a vast improvement.

Or just skip this step and print to CutePDF directly.