Converting to PDF - File size getting bigger!!

[Petal]

I am hoping to be able to buy a product that lets me convert a word doc (which has 70% text and the rest photos and house plan diagrams) into a PDF document which will make the document smaller without losing too much of the quality.

Example: My word doc is 882kb and I have used:

Nitro PDF Professional (which I paid $200 for)
doPDF (free)
Foxit PDF converter (free trial)

and in all the cases the file ended up being between 1.16mb and 2.01mb!!

I don't want to do anything fancy with PDF's other than a simple conversion of a word doc.

I am happy to pay what I have to, to enable me to get my file sizes smaller (even if I have to get the Adobe Writer for about $400) but I am hesitant because I am worried I might get it and it still doesn't reduce the file size.

On my old computer I used to have Adobe 6.0 Professional which did reduce the file size by about 15% but I was unable to install that again on my new computer and really I wouldn't mind buying something a bit more updated that might reduce the file size by up to 25 - 30%

Has anyone a product they can recommend they use to create PDF documents making them smaller??

Thankyou!!
Petal

 

[Perp]

I like the freeware pdfedit, which allows you to manipulate whether you want the pdf to be colour/B&W, resolution (dpi), and quality, all of which alter the file size (colour/B&W and quality more so than dpi).

 

[Dave Hooper]

Buy a mac. Conversion to pdf is built right in

 

[imonmyway]

Its probably more to do with the size of the pictures, open them in the windows paint program and save them as jpg format then post them back into the document.

Should reduce the size by a lot

 

[AlmostBob]

with most pdf packages the options are set to save in the highest resolution possible,
images at 1200dpi text in offset line art,
for most documents this is overkill, since the output device cannot display in that high resolution
tweaking settings in whatever package you are using will have more effect than changing packages, coz the new one will also be set out of the box to offset print quality.
Have a number of 800K pdf files, that were 1.5M before they were optimised for screen display
Using Acrobat 5, [tools][pdf consultant] gets a workout
The printer driver installed for word has buttons for
compression options - usually off, should be on
Graphic resolution - screen(96) to 1200dpi
font embedding - this is a big one, if your document only uses Arial Roman or other type faces that are on every computer you can embed NOTHING and reduce your file sizes by heaps

 

[ChrisBarras]

You could buy Adobe Acrobat Elements, this will convert files (word and others) to PDF i hjust tested a 400Kb file which convert to 29Kb, it is also a lot cheaper than Adobe Acrobat standard or Adobe Acrobat Professional

 

[Petal]

Wow what a lot of good replies. Plenty to go on with. A special thanks to Almost Bob who ALWAYS comes through for me with these types of questions.

I will advise how it all goes with my experimentation!!

 

[twodogs]

At home I use TinyPDF

http://www.tinypdf.com/

Works fine, no issues with output size, probably as it works as a printer driver so not converting images.

Free too