Will compressing make my text blurry?

Real text stays sharp, because it is stored as text, not as a picture. Scanned pages are pictures of text, so they can soften at the strongest setting — which is why you should check the result before sending.

How small will my file get?

It depends entirely on what is inside. Image-heavy scans often shrink a lot; text documents very little. Nobody can honestly promise a fixed percentage.

How to reduce a PDF's size so it fits in an email

Updated 2026-10-25

Most email services refuse attachments above roughly 20–25 MB. Gmail's limit is 25 MB and Outlook.com's is 20 MB, and the limit counts the whole message, so a 24 MB PDF can still bounce once encoding overhead is added. The usual culprit is not the text: it is scanned pages and photos stored at far higher resolution than a screen needs.

Compressing re-saves those images at a lower resolution and quality, which is where almost all of the saving comes from. A PDF that is already mostly text will barely shrink, and that is normal.

Open Compress PDF — free

Step by step

1Open Compress PDFSelect your file. It is read into your browser's memory; it is not sent to any server.
2Pick a levelStart with the balanced setting. Choose the stronger one only if the result is still too large.
3Check before you sendCompare the before and after sizes, open the result, and zoom in on a page with small print or a signature to make sure it is still legible.

If it is still too big

Split it. Sending a 40-page scan as two messages of 20 pages is often better than squeezing it until the text blurs. Split PDF can save a page range as its own file.

Remove pages nobody needs. Blank backs of scanned sheets and duplicate cover pages add size for nothing; Organize PDF lets you delete them visually.

Use a link instead. If the recipient accepts it, a shared-drive link avoids attachment limits altogether.

Why some PDFs hardly shrink

A PDF exported from Word or a web page is mostly text and vector graphics, which are already compact. There is little to remove without damaging the document. If such a file is still large, it usually contains embedded fonts or a few very large images; deleting or replacing those images in the source document and exporting again works better than compressing.

Questions

Will compressing make my text blurry?: Real text stays sharp, because it is stored as text, not as a picture. Scanned pages are pictures of text, so they can soften at the strongest setting — which is why you should check the result before sending.
How small will my file get?: It depends entirely on what is inside. Image-heavy scans often shrink a lot; text documents very little. Nobody can honestly promise a fixed percentage.

Your file stays on your device the whole time.

Open Compress PDF — free

Also useful: Split PDF · PDF to JPG