Windows: how to easily reduce the size of a PDF file?

Using an application and your mobile's camera, scanning a multi-page document has become child's play. Just take a photo, crop the image, repeat for subsequent pages, and press a button for a PDF ready to share.

While single-page documents scanned in this way generally do not present any problem and can be shared immediately from the smartphone, multi-page PDFs have, on the other hand, a major drawback: their often very heavy weight.

It is therefore impossible to transfer excessively large documents to certain administrative sites which impose a weight limit on the files. You will then have to transfer your PDFs to your PC to try to reduce their size by compressing them. And you won't need anything but your web browser to get there. Here's how.

1. Open the PDF in your browser

To compress your PDF, you will first need to open it with your web browser. Firefox, Edge Chromium and Google Chrome browsers can be used.

Right-click on your PDF, go to the Open with menu, and select your web browser. You can also drag and drop your file directly into a tab in your browser.

2. Launch the print module

Once your document is correctly displayed in your browser, choose to print it by clicking on the appropriate button or by using the key combination Ctrl+P.

The print settings pane should then open. From the drop-down menu to select the printer to use, choose Microsoft Print to PDF. The option seems natively accessible on Firefox and Edge Chromium, but not on Google Chrome.

If it does not appear on the latter, in the menu allowing you to select the printer (Destination), you may need to click on See more to be able to choose Microsoft Print to PDF.

3. Print a PDF

When all print settings are correctly selected, simply click the Print button. You will then be prompted to save a new version of your document, in PDF format, to your computer's hard drive.

Give a new name to your file and validate the recording. If all went well, the new version of your PDF should be smaller in size than the original document.