1 MB for a one page document

[Lynne Desrochers]

I have a carrier that consistently sends us large size documents for things that are just 1 or two pages. I just got a call from their IT department to say that "well 1 MB is not that big and normal for a document". For one page? Am I off base? You can tell me I can take it.
Thank goodness there's an all you can eat ice cream festival in Philly this weekend.  It's been a week.

[Charlie Charbonneau]

IF it's a color PDF yeah...  BW Tiff's or similar are much smaller.

[Lynne Desrochers]

Not color, just a one page invoice. Black and white.

[Alice Mooney]

I've scanned a B&W page on our color copier and it is huge.  I have to remember to change the setting to B&W in order for it to be smaller. Just another possibility and sounds like they really aren't concerned enough to look in to it.

[Charlie Charbonneau]

True, just because it LOOKS B&W doesn't mean it was printed as B&W!

[Hans Manhave]

It would be interesting to learn what was used to create the PDF.  If it was software, there are probably settings to take care of graphics, compression, color just as there is with a hardware (scanner/copier) generated document.  Some people overlook those settings.

[Lance Bateman]

Other options that could be causing problem - if done as Word bitmap; or tiff?

[Billy Welsh]

Machines are currently stupid.  So if you print a B&W document to a color printer and tell it to print in color, you will get a B&W printout made by mixing color ink/toner.

Along the same lines, if you scan a B&W as color, the scan may still look B&W, but the software is considering the B&W as colors (usually multiple shades) & is likely to give you a large file size.

[Terry Evans]

I was just going to do a similar post when I saw this.  I don't think Vendors, Companies, Clients really understand how fast storage size adds up when we are paperless.  Clients scan stuff from those home all-in-ones and it usually comes in about 1MB per page. 

Our scansnaps come in about 1MB/20 pages when average quality settings are used.

I recently printed a 179 page document from TAM and it was 183MB (more than 1MB per page).  This was all of the certificates on a client and I Previewed and saved to PDF.  When I went to Menu Bar>Document>Reduce file size, it reduced the document from 183MB to 2MB.  Imagine how much room is being wasted on storage from documents generated through TAM.  It takes way to much time to reduce the size of every file, but that's a lot of space.

[Lynne Desrochers]

Thanks everyone for their input. It's a company, so i would have thought that someone else would have called them on their scanning size by now. Terry your post makes me feel better, it's not just me. However, now I'm worried how many 183 MB files I have out there. The other issue is it takes a while to open a 183 MB pdf, and if they are opening it and printing it remotely, forget about it. At least that's our experience here.
It's hump day.   
lynne

[Mark]

now I'm worried how many 183 MB files I have out there.

Slightly off base, but years back I saw the free space on our eTFile server rapidly shrinking.  Went into the Fileroom and sorted by file size to find single page images GIGABYTES in size!  MANY of them!  After some quick research, I found that some print to eTFile settings were wrong for a handful of people.  Seems it was defaulting (to what I can't remember) for everyone but luckily only a handful of people actually use this feature.

Paying attention to details that may seem trivial at times can actually be a big deal.  Black and white documents should only be kilobytes.  Regardless of file type.

[Hans Manhave]

$38 but this software appears to be worth a shot.  It appears to work in batch mode.

www.verypdf.com/pdfinfoeditor/index.html

Disclaimer: I have not used this.  

[Jeff Golas]

Thank goodness there's an all you can eat ice cream festival in Philly this weekend.  It's been a week.

Whoa what hey...you mean I missed it??

[Lynne Desrochers]

Yes, you missed it  for you  for me. It was at Penns landing Saturday and Sunday. Sadly, the 10 and 12 year olds we were with were willing to turn in their spoons long before I was ready.  It was great, they had everyone from Ben & Jerrys to Breyers to of course, Bassetts.  yum.

[Hans Manhave]

How about Blue Bunny and Blue Bell?

It looks like all the ice cream brands must start with a 'B'.

[Lynne Desrochers]

No, not all B's, Edy's and Turkey Hill, hmmm, who else... I can't remember. It was all good though. Not enough chocolate offerings, but it just forced me to expand my horizons, both in ice cream flavors and my waistline.