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Very small file size (text only) .docx, .doc or .rtf becomes large PDF file - embedded fonts bug?

I have my CV (resume) and a covering letter. Neither has any pictures, just plain text. The file sizes in .docx, .doc or .rtf formats are 39, 76 and 171 KB respectively.

When I save as PDF, or export to PDF, the file size jumps to >400 KB, no matter which version I save/export from.

It's a fresh install of Office 2013 (365 University edition: I'm a researcher/teacher in a UK HEI). The file was imported from google drive where it was previously an openoffice formatted file.

The PDF appears to have quite a few fonts embedded - times new roman (which I was using accidentally for 2 white spaces, have now changed those), Symbol and Arial, which I'm not able to find at all in the document, and all the different styles of Callibri I'm using (bold, regular, italic) - each embedded twice with ansi and Identity-H encoding

I'm preparing for an interview and also writing another application right now, so I'm a bit up against it at the moment, and would greatly appreciate anyone's help on this!

Things I have tried:

  • Saving the document as .docx, reopening, export and save as PDF
  • Saving the document as .doc, reopening, export and save as PDF
  • Saving the document as .rtf, reopening, export and save as PDF
  • Ensured that track changes is off, and all meta information is not being saved (author, etc etc).
  • Tried all of the above with checked and unchecked 'embed fonts' in the options menu
  • Searching for the fonts I'm not using but that are listed in the properties of the PDF file when I look with Adobe Reader XI - I found two white spaces of Times New Roman which I changed to Callibri (which I'm using for the rest of the document). I couldn't find any instances of symbol or arial which were both listed in the PDF properties. Saving after this makes no difference to the pdf: all the fonts are still there, even though I'm not using them.
  • Select-all change font to Callibri (after this, no change when I PDF, and when I select all the font box is still blank as though there are more fonts and it didn't in fact change them).

Searching on this is compounded because most people seem to be asking for fonts to be embedded, not trying to stop fonts being embedded in this way! Callibri was what I chose when I originally created the document in OpenOffice some years ago. I've since bought myself Office 2013 and would really like not to be sending ~1MB files for just 7 pages of plain text - that's going to look really bad on a job application!!!!

Thanks in advance for your help!!

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Only option I could find not to embed fonts is available in adobe professional, the built in app does not have the option to disable the same.

Generally does not happen with simple text though.

Trying to be helpful.

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Only option I could find not to embed fonts is available in adobe professional, the built in app does not have the option to disable the same.

Generally does not happen with simple text though.

Thank you for the response, Elemental.

Your point about not happening with simple text got me thinking, so I tried copy then paste into new document as unformatted text - this almost halved the size of my 1 page cover letter from 311KB to 177KB. Still ridiculously huge for 220 words of text on 1 page, but certainly less obviously huge. I may have to reformat my entire CV (which is a royal pain as it has an appendix of references), so I'll decide if I have the time to do that in due course. If word is still going to embed multiple copies of Calibri, then I may only save the Times/Arial/Symbol space in the file size, but it could be worthwhile if only 1 encoding versions of the 3 sets of Calibri are embedded.

So frustrating. Surely Microsoft can come up with better software than this?

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Why not print it to xps or something similar?

Technically not an issue with ms office, but the way pdf software are designed.

Trying to be helpful.

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Well if we had the ability to strip out (unused!!) fonts from the .docx, .doc or .rtf file that word writes, that would be a start! Then at least only the fonts that are actually being used would be embedded, which seems to be the biggest problem here.

Anyway, thanks for your responses, it's been helpful for me to find a way to partially mitigate the problem, and I appreciate the time you took to help out!


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Assuming that you are using Word's built-in PDF filter, see if changing to the "Minimum size" option in the Save As dialog box makes a difference.

Alternatively, you could experiment with one of the third-party PDF converters and see if that affects the file size.
Stefan Blom
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Thanks for taking the time to respond. I forgot to mention in the original post that I had tried both of those things (admittedly only 1 online converter). The results were essentially identical, unfortunately.

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OK, thanks for the feedback.

You previously wrote that you pasted into a new document as "Unformatted Text." I guess that meant you lost a lot of formatting. What you can try is copying document content, minus the final paragraph mark, into a new, blank document. That should clear out most of the "garbage" in the file, while preserving formatting.

To show/hide paragraph marks (¶), as well as other nonprinting marks, click the ¶ button on the Home tab.
Stefan Blom
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OK, thanks for the feedback.

You previously wrote that you pasted into a new document as "Unformatted Text." I guess that meant you lost a lot of formatting. What you can try is copying document content, minus the final paragraph mark, into a new, blank document. That should clear out most of the "garbage" in the file, while preserving formatting.

To show/hide paragraph marks (¶), as well as other nonprinting marks, click the ¶ button on the Home tab.

Okay I tried this.

The original cover letter = 19KB as .docx and 311 KB as PDF  (exported within Word) - contains 6 embedded fonts.

The new file copied without the final paragraph mark is 14KB as .docx and 307KB as PDF (done the same way) - contains 7 embedded fonts (?!).


Compared to the pasting as unformatted text (then reformatting it manually - easier to do on the cover letter but will be a pain on the CV), that repasted version is 17KB as .docx and 177KB as PDF  - contains 3 embedded fonts.

What would be ideal is a way of probing this from within word itself, and removing the offending fonts before they're embedded.

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I see that the copy & paste "trick" didn't make much difference. It's a bit of a surprise that fonts are embedded even if you don't explicitly choose that option for the (Word) document, but I guess that PDF just works differently than Word's native formats.

By the way, are there any section breaks in the file? Try deleting them before converting to PDF.

Stefan Blom
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I see that the copy paste "trick" didn't make much difference. It's a bit of a surprise that fonts are embedded even if you don't explicitly choose that option for the (Word) document, but I guess that PDF just works differently than Word's native formats. By the way, are there any section breaks in the file? Try deleting them before converting to PDF. No breaks in the cover letter, but there are in the CV. I tried deleting them before conversion but I got the same file sizes. I think the answer is that Word will not ever remove fonts if they are historically used in a file, so you're better off making a new file and pasting as unformatted text then reformatting. Hopefully the panel won't be so **** about such things as I am! Thank you all for trying to help.

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Last updated December 16, 2024 Views 5,765 Applies to: