Optimise a PDF

Tools for when a PDF is too big, unsearchable, or will not open at all — the problems that stop a document being sent, found or read.

Tools

• Compress PDF — Make a PDF smaller in your browser.
• Split a PDF by File Size — Split a PDF into parts that each stay under a size you set, for email and upload limits.
• Convert a PDF to Greyscale — Turn a colour PDF into greyscale in your browser — smaller files and cheaper printing, with no upload.
• OCR a Scanned PDF — Recognise the text in a scanned PDF so it can be searched, selected and copied.
• Repair a Damaged PDF — Try to recover a PDF that will not open.
• Convert PDF to PDF/A — Convert a PDF towards PDF/A for archiving, embedding fonts so the document renders the same years from now.
• Flatten a PDF — Flatten a PDF so form fields, annotations and signatures become part of the page and can no longer be edited.

Questions

What actually makes a PDF large?

Almost always the images. A scanned page is a photograph, often stored far larger than anyone needs. Recompressing those pictures is usually where the entire saving comes from.