Email providers like Apple, Gmail and Yahoo limit the size and number of emails you can send.

I covered this in – Email… Are There Limits To What I Can Send And Receive?

So… what are your options if you need to send out a large PDF file?

You can skip this if you want to get to the good stuff.

• Break the document into smaller PDFs. Although sometimes necessary, this is time consuming and annoying for recipients.
• Use WeTransfer – One of the easiest ways to transfer data without complicated sign up procedures. Read about it here – The Simple Way To Send Movies To Friends From Your Mac
• Use Dropbox – A popular file sharing service that offers a secure, targeted data transfer platform. 

There’s another option not many people know about. It’s part of Preview and it’s called the Quartz Filter.

No… I’m not making this up.

How Do I Shrink A PDF Using Preview?

• Take any PDF File.
• Double click to open it in Preview*
• Go to the File menu in the Menu Bar and choose Duplicate…
• In the duplicate PDF, go to the file menu and choose Save…
• The Save dialog box opens.
• Notice the drop-down menu on the bottom labelled Quartz Filter.

• Click the drop-down menu and choose the option – Reduce File Size.
• Name the new file and Save it.

If you check the original and the new PDF and you’ll notice a substantial difference in the file size.

Mission accomplished 🙂 Have a fun weekend.

*If your PDF opens in Adobe Reader, you have 3 options:

• Close the file. Right-click on the file icon and choose Open With > Preview
• Close the file. Go to the Applications folder and open Preview. Open the file from inside Preview.
• Change the default App that opens PDFs on your Mac.

If you’d like to know about Preview or working with PDFs, try these posts:

How To… Markup A PDF Using Preview

Preview – The Fastest Way To Crop An Image on Your Mac

How To… Change The Way PDFs Are Shown In Apple Mail

Live in Los Angeles County and need Mac, iPad. or iPhone help, training, support, service, repair, or just want some questions answered…

Call me at 310-621-5679. I come direct to you. That’s as stress-free as it gets.