Cleaning up a word document

meebers · 23 Dec 2014

I confess, I have been using the same word document year after year to generate the new version of our family xmas newsletter. It is a single page and I change the year and fill in the current years news in place of last years news, change the name and save until next year.

I noticed this year it was a little sluggish while typing in new updates. I have inserted only 3 small .jpg files and the file size is 1.43MB. Is there a way to clean out any prior information/baggage so that I can get it down to a reasonable size. I know I can start fresh every year but....

The Howling Wolves · 23 Dec 2014

Try left click and dragging with the blue line showing. When you get to the end of what you want cleaned or erased then hit the delete button.

Hope I understood your question but post back so we know if this worked or not.
THW

ignatzatsonic · 23 Dec 2014

Or you could open the file and re-save it as text only.

The re-save shouldn't have any oddball formatting or stuff you don't want. Just plain text.

The pictures probably would be lost.

Then open the re-saved text file and re-save it again as a fresh Word document.

Re-paste your pictures in as you see fit.

You'd then have to re-format it to your liking.

whs · 23 Dec 2014

What baggage are you talking about. If you edit an old word document and store that, then all the info that you edited away is gone.

ignatzatsonic · 23 Dec 2014

meebers said:

It is a single page................ I have inserted only 3 small .jpg files and the file size is 1.43MB.

If it is literally one page long, contains 3 small jpegs, and is 1.43 MB, then it obviously has many unseen things going on with formatting.

Unless those "small" jpegs aren't really small.

An ordinary one page Word document shouldn't be over 10kb or something, maybe 1 percent of the size of your file.

You need to get rid of all of that behind the scenes stuff. So re-save as text only and start over.

whs · 23 Dec 2014

I have a 3 page Word document with 3 pictures. It is 1.12 MB

ignatzatsonic · 23 Dec 2014

whs said:

I have a 3 page Word document with 3 pictures. It is 1.12 MB

Yeah, that's certainly possible.

We just don't know the size of his pictures standing alone.

I've got one here that's about 6 pages long, with maybe 6 pictures; it's just under 1/2 MB.

Editing and re-editing over the course of years can lead to junk build-up, but I've never personally had it cause a problem worth solving.

A skilled Word operator could probably edit out all that formatting/style/font/page layout junk that is not shown on the screen, but I don't have that skill level with the application.

whs · 23 Dec 2014

The pics are not too big. This is page 2 with two pics. They are hyperlinks.