Print to PDF through Acrobat now leaves files 10x larger than previous- WHY??

I've had this same issue. It's so much easier to use the print to PDF function because it allows me to collate and remove extraneous pages. Often times, I'm looking at a 35MB PDF that's about 9-12 pages. I use the print function to reorganize and remove about half of that so that I wind up with 2-3 PDFs, each about 3-6 pages.

I've found that if I change the print options to print to smallest size and uncheck the print using system fonts only it greatly reduces the size still (45MB to 800KB). If you just use standard and uncheck print using system fonts it'll still reduce it (45MB to 4.5MB).

I would instead open the "Optimise PDF".

If you want simple there is reduce size if you need advanced there is Advanced Optimisation where you can do an audit so that you find out what is using space, you can also create presets for various optimisations. For example Arial, Helvetica and Times often don't need to to e embedded. You can see if files or content streams (vectors) are causing the file to be large. If you have large complex vector graphics rasterising may be the answer. For images usually keeping resolution but going harder on compression will give good file size to quality ratio.

For the lay user without any programming knowledge, this solution is of no help.  I have "played" around with the Image settings for a half hour and have yet to lose a single byte in file size, as  the "playing" with options equates to me sitting in a cockpit pushing buttons and seeing what happens to the airplane.

The print to PDF function worked, it worked well, it served my purpose, and I see that it will continue to serve my purpose, though less  optimally until a more non-programmer friendly solution is introduced into the program.