Form grows HUGE when filled in

[maddogprod]

We have a form that's 129K. Normally when it's filled out and submitted, it's 186K-300K (probably depending on how many textboxes are filled in and how much text). But we've received two where it's 7MB and 9MB and I can't figure out why or how that would happen. Any clues? Is there a way to analyze the PDF as they submitted it to see what's taking up all that space?

Thanks,

Mad Dog

[try67 · Accepted solution]

Yes. Open the file in Acrobat (Pro) and then go to the left-hand panel and right-click it. Select Content from the list.

The Content panel will open with the file name at the top. Right-click it and select Audit Space Usage. This will give you a breakdown of the space various elements in the file (fonts, images, content streams, etc.) are taking.

[maddogprod]

Thank you! Beautiful to know. There's always so much to learn....

Now....the culprit is "Document Overhead" which takes up 97% (7MB). If I check the original or an average other one, Document Overhead takes up 9% or about 12K.

What does this mean and where does all that new overhead come from?

THANKS!

[try67]

Yeah, that one's a bit vague... It could be the result of using some weird PDF viewer that adds all kinds of unnecessary stuff to the file, or of converting it to another format, perhaps. Couple of ways you can try and get rid of it is one to simple do a Save As and save the file under a new name. That forces an optimization and can decrease the file-size dramatically. Two, if the first option fails, is to save the file via File - Save As Other - Optimized PDF and then select to discard the "private data" under "Discard user data" in the dialog that opens.

[try67]

PS. Before doing the latter make sure you have a copy of the original file backed up, in case of any problems.

[maddogprod]

I'm less concerned with saving the file smaller (though who needs to save that large a file!) than I am trying to make sure it doesn't happen again since they had a problem uploading a file that size on the client site so it meant the getting them to email a copy.

Would there be anything anywhere that would tell me what they used to fill it in? Is that information stored or saved with the file in some meta data?

[try67]

You need to ask them exactly where they opened the file and how they edited

it.

[maddogprod]

Darn. I was hoping the PDF kept some meta.

THANKS for the help!