How to reduce a PDF to 100 KB or 200 KB for a job or scholarship portal

The problem

Scholarship, job and government portals often limit a single PDF to 100 KB, 200 KB or 500 KB. A scan from a phone app is usually 1 to 5 MB, so you need a 90% cut without making the text unreadable.

What works

• Scan at normal quality, not 'HD'. Extra resolution is wasted when the file is going to be shrunk.
• Remove pages the portal does not need, such as blank pages and cover sheets.
• Open the Compress PDF to KB tool, add the file and type your limit, for example 200 KB.
• Open the result, zoom to 100% and read a small line of text. If you cannot read it, raise the limit a little or split the document into two files.

Why scans are so big

A scan is a photograph of each page. Colour pages at 300 dpi can be 500 KB each. Converting to grayscale and lowering the resolution to about 150 dpi often makes a page 60 to 100 KB and still readable.

If you have a text PDF

PDFs saved from Word or Google Docs are already small because they hold text, not pictures. If one is big, it usually has large images inside. Compress will shrink those images.

Check before you upload

• File name: some portals reject spaces or long names. Use letters, numbers and hyphens.
• Format: the portal may want PDF/A or a specific page size.
• Keep the original file safe in case you need a better copy later.