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Compress a PDF to 10MB

10 MB is roomy, and yet a scanned document reaches it fast: our two-page color test scan started at 6.4 MB. Pick 10 MB in Compress and it keeps as much picture quality as that ceiling leaves room for, then shows the measured size before you download. Your file is never uploaded. A color scan of well over a hundred pages will not fit, and Compress says so rather than pretending.

Updated

Compress a PDF to 10 MB

What usually gets under 10 MB

  • A color scan of a couple of dozen pages, kept at the Recommended setting. A page of our test scans came to about 360 KB there, so 27 of them come in under 10 MB.
  • A much longer scan at a lower setting: at the lowest step each test page was a little over 80 KB, so a scan of around a hundred pages can still get there.
  • A file that is already under 10 MB, which Compress hands back exactly as it was instead of saving it again.

What may stay over 10 MB

  • A color scan of 125 pages or more. Each of our test pages was a little over 80 KB even at the lowest step, so a scan that long will not fit.
  • A book-length PDF that is large because of its fonts, not its pictures: Compress does not rebuild fonts.
  • Pages a scanner stored without JPEG compression, which Compress passes through unchanged.
  • Any PDF that needs a password to open, which Compress cannot process.

More on this: Why PDF files get large.

If your PDF stays over 10 MB

Send it in two or three parts

Split PDF can cut a long file at chosen pages or into equal parts, so each part has its own 10 MB, where whoever receives it accepts several files.

Open Split PDF

Join only what belongs together

If the large file was made by joining several documents, merge only the ones this submission asks for, and compress that smaller file.

Open Merge PDF

Scan the next long document as JPEG pages

When a big scan barely shrinks, its pages were likely saved losslessly. A scanning app set to JPEG pages produces a file Compress can work on.

Forms that ask for 10 MB

We have not read a 10 MB limit on a publisher's own page and dated it, which is the only way a form gets into a table here, so this page lists none. Read the upload instructions of your form or portal.

A different size

Aiming for a different size? Each of these has its own page.

If you have no set size to hit, open Compress PDF without a target and choose from the sizes it offers for your file.

If the form asks you to resize the PDF, it means the file size: Resize PDF does the same job under that name and leaves every page its own size.

Compress runs in your browser. Your PDF is not uploaded, there is no account, and no watermark is added to the smaller copy.