Your PDF is too large to upload

Why PDFs get big

Text in a PDF is tiny: a hundred pages of plain text can be well under 1 MB. What makes PDFs large is images. A scanned page is a full photograph of the page, and phone scans are often several megabytes each. A PDF made from photos or slides is the same story.

Recompress the images inside

The most effective fix is to recompress the images inside the PDF at a resolution that still reads well on screen and prints cleanly. Text and vector graphics stay exactly as they were, so nothing becomes blurry except images that were far more detailed than they needed to be.

Hitting a specific limit

Many forms cap uploads at 1 MB or 2 MB per document. Okaysize's size presets start with light compression and go stronger only if needed, so the PDF stays as clear as possible under the limit.

• Under 2 MB: usually achievable for scans of a few pages while keeping small print readable.
• Under 1 MB: works for most short scanned documents. Check small print in the result before submitting.
• Long text only PDFs may not shrink much. They're already compact; split them into parts instead.

Scan smarter next time

• Scan documents at 150 to 200 DPI. 300 DPI is for photos and archiving.
• Use grayscale for text documents. Color scans of black and white pages triple the size for no benefit.
• Scan only the pages you need.