Upload forms often stop at 1 or 2 MB, and many email services refuse attachments over 20 or 25 MB. Compress PDF gets a file under the limit while keeping its text sharp and selectable.
Compress a PDF under 1 MB, step by step
- Open Compress PDF and choose your file.
- Pick Target size and enter 1 MB, or whatever size the form or email asks for.
- Select Compress PDF. GrovePDF tries the lightest compression first and stops as soon as the file fits.
- Check the new size shown with the result, then download.
If a file can't get that small, the result says how close it got. Only as a last resort are pages turned into images to reach the size, and the result tells you when that happened.
The compression levels
- Keep text: a lossless clean-up. Nothing you can see changes.
- Balanced: pictures at 150 dpi. Text stays sharp and selectable.
- Smallest: pictures at 100 dpi, compressed harder. Text still stays sharp and selectable.
- Target size: the lightest compression that reaches the size you choose.
Compression works on the pictures inside a PDF: photos, scans and illustrations. A PDF that is mostly text is already small, so it may not shrink much.
Tips for smaller files
- Remove pages you don't need first with Remove pages: fewer pages, smaller file.
- Go black and white. Grayscale PDF turns colours to grey, which usually makes the file smaller and is cheaper to print. Text stays sharp and selectable.
- Scanning? In Scan to PDF, the black-and-white filter gives the sharpest, smallest result for text.
When a PDF won't open: repair it
A download that stopped halfway or a file damaged in transit can refuse to open. Repair PDF rebuilds the file's structure (broken cross-reference tables, wrong offsets, truncated files) and recovers as much as possible. If the file is too damaged to rebuild, the pages that can still be read are saved as pictures. Missing content can't be brought back, so keep the original if you can get it again.