Difference in how Word saves files?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
  • Start date Start date
G

Guest

Using my old version of Word, I would generate Word docs (.doc) with about 12
scans on a page, saving it used about 60-70 MB of hard drive space each.
Using the same file but re-saving it under the new Word 2007 format (.docx),
the same page uses only 2 MB. Considering each one of the .jpgs is at least
4-6 MB each, does the new Word 2007 use some super compression technique? I
don't want save the new documents under the old system because of hard drive
space, but I don't want to risk the new documents as .docx not having all the
information..
 
Without being able to see the before and after documents, it is difficult to
know exactly why, but some of the reasons are:

Word 2007 uses a completely different file format that zips several
components into a single zip file using .docx or .docm rather that .zip.
(You can see this by renaming a .docx file with a .zip extension and opening
in a ZIP utility).
You may have bloated your Word 2003 documents by having Fast Saves enabled.
The images in Word 2007 may be compressed and only saved at screen
resolution (96dpi) rather than print resolution (300dpi).

There's a host of other possibilities as ell. But if you take on of your 2MB
docx files and use SaveAs and save it in Word97-2003 compatibility format,
what size does it become?
 
Hi Terry, thanks for your help. I couldn't tell you if I have Fast Saves
enabled.. when I took a .docx file newly created and saved it as .doc, it did
not take on a large size (65MB), it stayed at the small 2MB size. If the
pictures are saved at 96dpi, this will affect the picture quality when it's
time to print, correct? I need them to be high resolution, is there a way to
bypass this compression? i understand memory size increases, but I'll take
that for the high quality graphics. Sorry for the newbie question, but where
would I check to find out these configurations? (should have mentioned,
running Vista)
 
I believe Fast Saves has been eliminated from Word 2007.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
 
To change the 'default' graphics compression, select a picture (the Picture
Tools, Format ribbon will open) and click on Compress Pictures. By default,
it is usually set to 'Screen: 150 ppi' - change this to Print: 220 ppi.

As Suzanne says, FastSaves (always more problem than help) has finally been
killed off in W2k7.

Terry
 
Back
Top