Compress PDF to 5 MB

Job application portals, university and scholarship applications, rental applications and many online forms that take a whole set of documents in one file. Some workplaces also limit email attachments to about this size.

Combine them into one PDF with Merge PDF, then compress the merged file here. The CV and the letter are typed text and take very little room; the scanned certificates are what make the file heavy, and they are what gets lighter.

Our thirty-page colour scan, 32.5 MB, came down to 3.92 MB, and our twelve-page one to 2.49 MB. A document made from typed text fits at almost any length. What fills 5 MB fastest is a brochure or a portfolio with a large photo on every page; the result then shows the smallest size it could make.

Yes, on screen and on an office printer. In the first step the pictures are drawn at 150 dots per inch, about what a screen shows, and they go lower only if the file is still over 5 MB. Charts, lines and text made in the document itself are not pictures, so they stay sharp.

The limit you were given, if there is one. If the file goes by email and nobody named a limit, 5 MB is the safer choice: it still fits a 10 MB mailbox after it grows by about a third in sending. 10 MB keeps more detail on long scans: our thirty-page scan kept 150 DPI at 10 MB but dropped to 110 DPI at 5 MB.

No. It stops at the first step that fits under 5 MB, so the pictures lose only as much detail as the limit needs. A file that is already under 5 MB is given back unchanged.