How to compress a PPT file so it fits in an email
Your deck is too big to attach. Send a smaller PDF if they only need to read it, or slim the PowerPoint itself if they need to edit it. Here's how to do both.
The deck is 48 MB and Gmail won't take anything over 25. If you need to compress a PPT file to get it out the door, there are two ways to do it, and which one you want depends on the person getting it. If they only need to read it, review it or print it, send a PDF. It's usually much smaller and opens anywhere. If they need to edit the slides, keep it a PowerPoint and slim it down from inside PowerPoint.
Both are below. First, a quick look at where all those megabytes come from, because it tells you which fix will actually work.
Why your PowerPoint is so big
Text barely counts. A hundred slides of bullet points stay small. The weight is almost always in:
- Photos at full size. A picture dropped in straight from a phone or camera keeps every pixel it was taken with, even when it fills a corner of one slide.
- Embedded video and audio. This is the big one. One embedded clip can outweigh everything else in the deck put together.
- Cropped areas. When you crop a picture, PowerPoint keeps the part you cropped away, in case you change your mind.
- Embedded fonts. Useful when the recipient doesn't have your fonts, but each one adds to the file.
- Leftover layouts and masters. Decks built from other decks pick up slide masters and layouts nobody uses.
Want to see exactly what's heavy? A .pptx file is really a zip folder. Make a copy, rename the copy from .pptx to .zip, and open it. Inside, the ppt/media folder holds every picture, video and sound in the deck. Sort it by size and the culprits are at the top. (Do this to a copy, never the original.)
That's also why zipping a .pptx barely helps: it's already compressed.
Need it small to send? Turn it into a PDF
This is the route we'd take for most decks going by email. PrintFriendly doesn't shrink a .pptx itself. What it does is turn your deck into a PDF, and then make that PDF smaller if it needs to be.
- Go to PPT to PDF and drop your file on the box that says Drag & Drop or Choose File to Upload. Both .ppt and .pptx work.
- Your deck opens with every slide as a page. Click Download, then PDF.
- Check the size of the PDF you got. If it's under your email's limit, you're done.
- Still too big? Drop the PDF on Compress PDF, where the box says Drag and drop a PDF here, and download the smaller copy.
You can upload and look at your file without an account. Downloading the result takes a free PrintFriendly account. File size limits and how long files are kept are on our PDF Tools help page.
What you keep: every slide, as a page, with its layout, fonts, colors and pictures the way they looked in PowerPoint.
What you lose: animations, transitions, and video and audio playback. A PDF is for reading and printing, not for presenting with builds that fly in one at a time.
That trade is exactly why the PDF is often the better thing to send anyway. Think about who's on the other end:
- A manager or client who just needs to review it.
- A class or a meeting that wants handouts.
- A portal or form that asks you to upload your slides.
- Anyone who doesn't have PowerPoint, or has a different version that shifts your fonts around.
In all of those, a PDF looks the same on every device, and nobody can accidentally nudge a text box.
Need it to stay a PowerPoint? Shrink it inside PowerPoint
When someone needs to edit the slides, the fix happens in PowerPoint. These steps are for PowerPoint on Windows. On a Mac the menus are a little different, but Compress Pictures is there too, on the Picture Format tab.
Compress the pictures. This is the one that does the most for most decks.
- Click any picture in the deck.
- On the Picture Format tab, click Compress Pictures.
- Uncheck Apply only to this picture, so it covers the whole deck.
- Leave Delete cropped areas of pictures checked.
- Pick a lower resolution. E-mail is the smallest; Web is a good middle ground for slides shown on a screen.
Stop new pictures from coming in huge. Under File > Options > Advanced, find Image Size and Quality. Check Discard editing data and set Default resolution to something lower. This only affects pictures you add from now on, so do it before you build the next deck, not after.
Deal with the video. On Windows, File > Info > Compress Media shrinks embedded video and audio. Better still, take the video out of the file: upload it to OneDrive, YouTube or wherever your team keeps video, and put a link on the slide instead. That one change often does more than everything else here put together.
Don't embed fonts you don't need. Under File > Options > Save, uncheck Embed fonts in the file if the people opening it use common fonts or have the same ones you do.
Clear out the leftovers. Delete hidden slides you don't need. In View > Slide Master, delete layouts nobody uses.
Save a fresh copy. Use File > Save As with a new name when you're done, and keep the original somewhere safe. Compressed pictures can't be un-compressed.
About online PPT compressors
Plenty of sites will take a .pptx and hand back a smaller one. Most of them shrink the pictures, the same thing Compress Pictures does, which is handy if you don't have PowerPoint in front of you. Some go through a PDF and back to a .pptx, and those lose the animations on the way and can shuffle text boxes around. Either way, keep your original. And if a tool is going through PDF anyway, ask yourself whether the person needs a .pptx at all, or whether the PDF would do.
Still too big?
- Find the video. If the deck is over 100 MB, look for an embedded video first. Link it instead.
- Split the deck. Send part one and part two, or pull the appendix into its own file.
- Send a link instead. Put the file in OneDrive, Google Drive or Dropbox and share the link. Gmail does this for you: attach something too big and it offers a Google Drive link instead.
Email size limits, quickly
| Email service | Attachment limit |
|---|---|
| Gmail | 25 MB |
| Outlook.com | 20 MB |
Aim a few megabytes under the limit, not right at it. Attachments get bigger on the way out, so a file right at the limit can still bounce. Work email often has its own, lower limit, so if a file keeps bouncing, ask your IT team what yours is.
If your deck is already a PDF and it's the PDF that's too big, How to Compress and Email Large PDF Files walks through that part.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is my PowerPoint file so large?
Almost always it's the pictures and the media. Photos dropped in straight from a phone or camera, and any video or audio embedded in the slides, outweigh the text many times over. Embedded fonts and leftover slide layouts add a little more.
How do I compress a PPT file to under 25 MB for email?
If the person only needs to read or print it, turn it into a PDF and send that, compressing the PDF too if it's still big. If they need to edit the slides, compress the pictures and media inside PowerPoint, then save a fresh copy. If it's still over, send a cloud link instead of an attachment.
Does converting a PowerPoint to PDF make it smaller?
Usually, yes, especially when the deck has embedded video or audio, because a PDF doesn't carry those. Every slide becomes a page that looks the way it did in PowerPoint. What you give up is the animations, transitions and playback.
Will compressing a PowerPoint ruin the image quality?
Not on a screen, if you pick a sensible resolution. Photos come down to roughly what a monitor can show, which is plenty for slides. If the deck will be printed large or shown on a huge screen, pick a higher resolution and keep the original.
