How Do I Make a PDF Smaller? Zip?

Instead of trying compression techniques, there is an alternative approach for you.

Upload your pdf file to an online storage website - there are some allowing you to store up to a gigabyte.
You will be given the URL to enter into a browser or to include as a link on any website which, when selected will pull in the pdf file!

To find such storage sites (free) just Google free online storage.

I beg to differ.

I said that PDF's are already compressed. This is simply true and the following algorithms are used by Acrobat.

• JPEG & JPEG2000
  
• ZIP
  
• CCITT G3/G4
  
• RLE
  
• Flate
  
• JBIG2
  

As you can see, PDF's already use the ZIP algorithm. Yes, you can use programs to optimize the PDF document to reduce file size but they aren't really compressing as they change the file in order to achieve economy.

For more on PDF shrinking this is a very good article:

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/pdf/

But heck don't take my word for it, just ask Squinney to waste her time zipping it for you and telling you it didn't work herself.

Now back to helping Squinney:

As DrewDad mentioned, you can "re-author" the file without changing the content. He also had a good idea with a "print to pdf" solution as there are free options you can use. Basically you'd select a range of pages and print to a file, then do the rest. Here's some free software that allows you to print to pdf files: http://www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp

But here's another idea: http://createpdf.adobe.com/

The online PDF creation suite has Optical Character Recognition and should be able to do what you need. It's $10/month but they say they have a free trial for 5 documents. It should let you do what you need.

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Robert.

The Create PDF looks like a good thing to have long term if the Board is going to be sending me documents they have scanned. They are not techies and e-mails, scanning and faxing are the extent of their computer file sharing knowledge.