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.

Apple Preview - Quartz Filter - Reduce File Size

  • 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

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