How to Compress a PDF for Email (Under 1 MB)

Gmail lets you attach up to 25 MB, many university portals stop at 2–5 MB, and government forms often ask for files under 1 MB. If your PDF is too big, here's how to shrink it without making it unreadable.

Step by step

1. Open the free PDF Compressor.
2. Drop your PDF in.
3. Choose a mode:
   • Smart keeps the text selectable and searchable. Best for documents exported from Word or other software.
   • Strong turns each page into an optimised image. Best for scanned documents and PDFs full of photos — this gives the biggest savings.
4. Pick a quality level and press Compress. DoraPDF shows you exactly how many percent smaller the new file is.

Why are some PDFs so big?

Almost always it's the images. A single photo from a modern phone can be 3–5 MB. Scan ten pages at full resolution and you quickly have a 40 MB file, even though the text itself takes up almost no space.

Getting under 1 MB

If Smart mode doesn't shrink it enough, try this order:

1. Strong mode, Balanced quality. Usually enough for a 10–20 page scan.
2. Strong mode, Smallest quality. Text is still readable on screen and when printed.
3. Split it. If a portal allows several uploads, use the PDF Splitter to break a long document into parts.

Compress images before you make the PDF

Creating a PDF from photos? Run them through the Image Compressor first and set a maximum width of 1920 px. Your final PDF will be a fraction of the size.

Is compression safe?

With DoraPDF the whole process happens in your browser. Your PDF is never uploaded, so confidential documents stay on your device.