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How to Compress a PDF: Helpful Guide

If you were looking for detailed instructions on how to compress a PDF, you clicked on the right link. At PDFLiner, we provide comprehensive instructions for all operations with PDF files. By compressing a PDF file, you can reduce its size and share large docs much faster. It’s also a good way to bypass the limitations of messengers and other file-sharing services.

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In this concise guide, you will find all the needed info on how to compress PDF files. But before compressing a PDF, you may also want to work on it. PDFLiner lets you edit PDF documents effortlessly and save them on your computer. Once a PDF to compress is ready, use one of the services below.

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Compress a PDF in a Few Clicks

Here are the most convenient and reliable services to have your PDF compressed. We selected free and paid online and offline services so that you could choose the one that matches your needs the most.‍

Compress PDF for free with these online services:

  • IlovePDF – this service makes compressing PDF online really easy. It also offers a quick online tool for splitting up and merging PDF files;
  • PDFCompressor.com – this straightforward website is all about compression. It can compress PDF online for free. The number of documents is limited to 20 items per operation, but you can repeat the process as many times as you need.‍

If you work offline, use try these free options:

  • PDF Expert – this one is an exclusive app for Mac OS that lets you to compress a PDF file right after editing it;
  • PDFCompressor.net – this Windows utility lets you get an unlimited number of free compressed PDF documents offline.

Paid online services are quite rare, but Smallpdf is a popular one. This platform lets you compress PDF online for free unless you have many files to batch. The paid version doesn’t have limitations.

Adobe Acrobat is the best paid offline service. This classic piece of software is a worthy pro-grade PDF editor that can be used for compressing a PDF file size. Compressing Adobe PDF is free with this one if you use the online version.

FAQ

Below are concise answers to some of the most frequently asked questions on PDF compression by our users and blog readers. Read them through for more useful tips on PDF file compressing.

How to compress a PDF file if you’re not a pro?

Fortunately, you don’t need to be a professional computer user to compress PDF files. Using one of the services listed above or the Preview-integrated file size reducer on your Mac, you can get compressed pdf files in a few clicks. There are both free services for compressing a small number of files and paid services for batching multiple files with custom settings.

How to compress a PDF on Mac?

The procedure of compressing PDF on Mac OS X is a bit different. The default PDF viewer on this OS lets you compress a PDF for free offline. Follow these steps to do it:

  1. Open a file you want to compress;
  2. Select ‘File’ and click ‘Export’ on the drop-down menu;
  3. Click ‘Quartz Filter’;
  4. Select ‘Reduce file size’ filter from the list;
  5. Encrypt the file with a password if needed;
  6. Click ‘Save’.

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Liza Zdrazhevska
Content Marketer at PDFLiner

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