How to compress a PDF to under 200 KB

01What fits in 200 KB

Text that is real text is light: dozens of typed pages can fit in 200 KB. Scans are heavy, because each page is a photograph of the paper. In practice 200 KB holds a few scanned pages at modest quality, which is what most application forms expect.

Portals that ask for several documents in one upload are the hard case. If you have to combine a certificate and a transcript, merge them first and compress the combined file, because the limit applies to the file you upload rather than to each part.

02Compress a PDF to under 200 KB, step by step

Trim the document to what the form needs, then compress it once.

1. 1Take out pages the portal does not need, such as instruction sheets or blank backs of scanned pages, with Remove Pages.
2. 2Open Compress PDF, add the file and type 0.18 in the target size box. The box is in megabytes, and 0.18 MB is about 189 KB.
3. 3Run it. Image quality is lowered first; images are scaled down only when quality alone cannot reach the target.
4. 4Zoom in on the signature, the stamp and any small print such as grades or registration numbers. If they have gone soft, see the next section before trying again.

The size in the target box is a ceiling. If your document is mostly text, the result may land well below it, and that is fine.

03Keeping stamps and signatures legible

Stamps and handwritten signatures are thin lines, and they are the first details to blur when a scan is compressed hard. Colour matters here too: a blue signature or a red stamp can fade into the text when colour is removed.

• For a document printed in black with a black or dark stamp, Grayscale PDF usually saves a good share of the size without hurting legibility.
• For a certificate with a coloured seal or signature, keep colour and cut pages instead.
• If a result looks soft, try a slightly larger target that is still under the limit, such as 0.19, rather than stripping more detail.

04When the file will not go under 200 KB

If the tool says the document would still be around a certain size even with every image removed, the text, fonts and page structure alone are over the target, and removing pages is the only way under it.

If the file reaches the target but stamps or signatures have become unreadable, the scan is too heavy for the number of pages. Scanning again at a lower resolution, around 150 dpi, usually gives a cleaner result, and many portals accept separate uploads for separate documents, which gives each file its own 200 KB.