> For all you Acrobat experts out there...
>
> I have a MS Word document which is 1.4mb. If I print it to a .pdf file
> using the PDFWriter utility which comes with Acrobat 4.0, the
> .pdf file is
> over 12mb.
>
> Why is it so big? Is there any way I can generate a smaller .pdf file?

From what I've read, the main culprit is usually pictures embedded in your
document.  One hint is to change your embedded bitmaps to JPEG to reduce
size.  I also read that using the distiller, you can set options for
compression where you can't in the PDFWriter.

Some links that might help:

http://www.espere.org/pdffile.htm
http://partners.adobe.com/asn/developer/training/acrobat/eforms/mod2/tech2.h
tml

Finally, from: http://www.csuchico.edu/~jknolle/pdfoverview.html

Decreasing the size of PDF files.

By embedding all fonts, the user increases the size of the PDF file by
storing font information in the document. If the font displayed is not
crucial to the document, don't embed fonts.
When font embedding is necessary, choose to subset all fonts. If you choose
to subset all fonts by 35%, then Acrobat checks to see if fewer than 35% of
the characters in a typeface are used. If so, only the characters used are
embedded rather than the entire font. This can substantially reduce the size
of PDF files.
Color options: Choose the option to convert all colors to RGB, this will
ensure that Acrobat Reader does not have to convert any CMYK or indexed
color images at the time of viewing.
Use few fonts
Limit variations of fonts. A bold variation of a font is considered an
additional typeface.
Limit graphics to those that are necessary.
Use compression options to downsample images to lower resolutions (i.e. 72)
Use vector images rather than raster images.
White space is free. A full page of text will result in the same file size
as two half-full pages of text.
Solid color backgrounds use fairly little disk space. Complex or tiled
backgrounds tend to be much larger.

HTH,

Mark

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