Reducing size of form

[GetGo Operations]

Good morning,

Complete Newbie here using Adobe Acrobat Pro DC (64-bit).

I have created a form in Adobe from a Excel document.

It is only a 1 page form with about 70 form fields.

The issue I am experiencing is that the total size of the form is 22.78 MB.

I have tried the following already:

Saving as Reduced Size PDF

Save as Other > Optimized PDF

Neither of these have reduced the size significantly.  I've also tried using a different 3rd party tool to Compress the PDF - also little difference was made.

When in the PDF Optimizer screen and navigate to the "Audit Space Usage", I can see that the Fonts are 99.44% of the total size:

Anyone have any idea's how to reduce the size of my form please?

[Bernd Alheit]

Which font does you use in the form fields?

[GetGo Operations]

Hi Bernd,

The text labels next to each form field is Calibri (size 5.16) and the text selected for the Form fields is Calibri (size 8).

I amended the text labels to Ariel to test if it made a difference, and the file size is still similar.

[try67]

Once the fonts are embedded it's very difficult to get rid of them. The easiest way is to create a new static version of the file, edit the fields in the original so that they don't use these heavy fonts any longer, and then copy them from the old file to the new one.

[GetGo Operations]

Thanks, the current font used throught the Form is Calibri.  Is there a font that I should use instead?

[try67]

One of the "built-in" fonts is your best option to reduce the file size. These are the fonts that appear above the first divider line in the list of fonts of a field.

[GetGo Operations]

Thanks @try67 I changed the text fields and form field text to Helvetica as recommended, but the size isn't reduced.  

[Bernd Alheit]

• Create a PDF with a empty page
• Add the the pages from your form
• Delete the empty page
• Save the new form

[try67]

Did you re-create the file, as I instructed above?

[GetGo Operations]

I've removed each element individually to see what 'font' is causing the size to be soo big.

1) Removed all Text fields next to form fields

2) Removed all form fields completely

3) Removed all lines

I've even removed every single element on the form leaving me with a blank document - and the size remains the same?

[Bernd Alheit]

This doesn't remove the embedded font.

[Test Screen Name]

You can't fix this by changing anything on the form. Did you try, as suggested, copy/paste of the form elements into a new copy of the base PDF?

[JR Boulay]

Each text field requires the whole font to be embedded if it's not part of the 14 Standard PDF fonts.

Fonts used by text fields cannot be removed/unembedded.

You must therefore make sure that the fields in your form use the Helvetica or the Times font before using the PDF Optimizer.

[JR Boulay]

Can you share this form?