How do I get a PDF small enough for court e-filing?

The deadline is tonight, the document is ready, and the court's e-filing system rejects it as too large. Scanned exhibits and photographs are usually the reason, and they are also the part that can be made smaller without losing anything a reader needs.

Start with the court's own rules

Every court, tribunal and e-filing system sets its own rules, and they differ between countries, between courts in the same country, and sometimes between case types in the same court. Before you change anything, find your court's e-filing guidance and note:

• The size limit, and whether it applies to each file or to the whole submission.
• Whether text must be searchable. Many courts ask for PDFs whose text can be selected and searched, not plain pictures of pages.
• The page size. Usually Letter in the US and Canada, and A4 in the UK, Australia and Europe.
• Whether a particular kind of PDF is required, such as PDF/A.
• Rules on passwords, files attached inside the PDF and fillable forms. E-filing systems generally refuse a PDF that needs a password, and some ask for forms to be flattened.

This page is about preparing the file. The court's rules always win, and when they are unclear, ask the court clerk or your lawyer.

Step 1: compress with a size target

Compress PDF has a To a size option. Type the court's limit in KB, a little under it to leave room. The box counts 1 KB as 1,000 bytes, so 9500 for a 10 MB limit, or 4750 for 5 MB, fits however the court's system counts.

The pictures inside the file are lowered in resolution step by step, starting gently, and the tool stops at the first step where the file fits, so the result is only as soft as it has to be. Typed text is not a picture, so it stays sharp at any setting. A fillable form stays fillable.

When a file cannot get under the limit, you are told the smallest size it reached instead of being handed a file that will be rejected again. That almost always means the document has too many pages for one file, which step 3 deals with.

Step 2: make sure the text is searchable

Scanned exhibits are pictures of paper. If the court wants searchable text, run the scans through OCR PDF before you compress. It reads the words on each scanned page and saves them as invisible text over the original image, so the page looks exactly the same but can be searched and copied.

It reads the first 30 scanned pages of a document in one go and tells you if there are more, so split a long scanned bundle into parts first. Recognition is usually accurate on clean scans and weaker on faint copies and handwriting, and a mistake can look right. The picture of the page is what the reader sees; the hidden text is what search finds.

After compressing, open the file, search for a word you know is in a scanned exhibit, and make sure it is found. That one check tells you the text survived.

Step 3: split what will not fit

A long document full of scans can simply be too big for one file. Many e-filing systems let you upload the main document and each exhibit as separate attachments, and some prefer it. Split PDF takes out a range of pages, such as 12-48, as a new PDF in one run, and it works in your browser without uploading the file. Name each part so the clerk can tell what it is: "Exhibit A, lease agreement" says more than "scan0042".

Step 4: remove what the system will refuse

Passwords and restrictions. If a file asks for a password when it opens, or blocks printing or changes, remove that before filing. Unlock PDF does it; you need the password if the file asks for one, and only for files you are allowed to open.

The wrong kind of PDF. If the court requires PDF/A, convert the file once everything else is done. Converting a PDF to PDF/A for court filing explains the versions and what changes. Check the size again afterwards, because embedding fonts can add a little.

Personal details the rules say to hide. Courts commonly require some personal information to be removed or shortened before filing. In US federal courts, for example, Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 5.2 limits filings to the last four digits of Social Security and financial account numbers, the year of a person's birth, and a minor's initials. Black boxes drawn over text do not remove it; use real redaction such as Redact PDF, which takes the text out of the file and checks nothing is left under each mark.

Scanning tips that save the most space

If you are still scanning paper, a few choices at the scanner save more space than any setting afterwards:

• Black and white or greyscale for text pages. A colour scan of a black-and-white letter is several times larger for no benefit. Keep colour for photos and anything where colour matters.
• 300 DPI is plenty for text. Higher settings make much bigger files that look the same on screen.
• Crop the edges. The desk around a photographed page is still pixels.

A filing-day checklist

1. Read the court's size limit and format rules.
2. Make scanned pages searchable if the rules ask for it.
3. Compress with To a size, slightly under the limit.
4. Split exhibits that still do not fit, and name each part clearly.
5. Remove passwords, redact what the rules require, and convert to PDF/A if required.
6. Open every final file, check each page is readable, and search for a word to confirm the text is there.

Where your files go

Compress PDF, OCR PDF and Redact PDF save their result on our server: each file is sent over an encrypted connection and deleted after processing, and Redact PDF keeps it only while you work, for up to 30 minutes. Split PDF works in your browser and never uploads the file. Unlock PDF also works in your browser, and only if your browser cannot handle a file is it sent to our server, used once and deleted.