PDF too large to upload? Here’s what to do on Mac

First, read the limit carefully

• Per file or in total? Job portals, university systems and visa applications often allow, say, 10 MB per file but 20 MB altogether.
• MB or MiB? Finder counts 1 MB as 1,000,000 bytes. Some servers count 1,048,576. If your file is within a few percent of the limit, make it a little smaller.
• Is it really the size? Some sites say “file too large” when the real problem is the format. If the PDF is small and still rejected, see what to do when a website only accepts PDF and check that the file isn’t password-protected.

Find out why the PDF is large

Open it in Preview. If you can’t select the text, it’s a scan: the pages are images and they will shrink a lot. If it has many photos, the same applies. A long text-only PDF that is still large usually embeds many fonts, and there is less to gain. See why a PDF gets so big.

When compressing isn’t enough

1. Split it. Open the PDF in Preview, choose View › Thumbnails, select the pages for the first part and drag them to the desktop. Repeat for the rest. Upload the parts, if the form accepts several files.
2. Drop what isn’t needed. Blank pages, duplicate scans and cover sheets add weight without adding information.
3. Rescan. A text document scanned at 600 dpi in colour is several times larger than the same document at 200 to 300 dpi in greyscale, which is perfectly readable.

Why not an online compressor?

It works, but it means uploading the document to a service you don’t know, waiting for it to process, and downloading the result, before you can do the upload you actually needed. For applications, contracts and ID documents, that is a lot of copies in a lot of places. FileMate makes the smaller copy on your Mac.