TIL: Never create a PDF from Word with 'Calibri' selected

1

Today I attempted the somehow-very-difficult task of reducing the size of a PDF that will be downloaded many times.

I didn’t want it to be 6 MB anymore. I thought it was because there was an image embedded. But then I realized the original image is about 600 KB so why is the image causing the file size to blow up 10 times? I downloaded a trial of Adobe Acrobat XI Pro, which has a “space audit” feature and that told me that it embedded the font Calibri in the file. Okay, but there’s not a single character typed into the file. Calibri wasn’t even used, it’s just an image. Acrobat also has an “optimize PDF” feature. Well, that will tell you that it will un-embd fonts and it will even tell you later that no fonts are embedded. It’s lying. Recreate the PDF from Word with Times New Roman selected.

Now, my PDF is entirely the size of the image.

2

I recall having problems trying to compress PDFs with embedded images in the past.

3

In this situation the image wasn’t the problem at all. Before discovering this, the same Word document was used but because Calibri was the selected font, it was embedded in to the document in such a way that it can’t be removed.