How to Compress a PDF for Email
Most email providers cap attachments around 20-25MB, and plenty of everyday PDFs — scanned ones especially — blow past that without the sender realizing until the email bounces.
Check your actual limit
It varies by provider, and sometimes by the recipient's own mailbox settings too. Not sure? Aim conservatively for under 10MB, which clears nearly every limit out there.
Compress before you send
Start at medium compression — it usually cuts size significantly while keeping text and images legible. Check the result and only bump up to high if it's still too big.
When compression alone doesn't cut it
A genuinely huge document — lots of high-res scans — might need to be split into two smaller files sent separately, or hosted on a cloud link instead of attached directly.
Sending several attachments at once
Limits usually apply to the total of all attachments combined, not each file on its own. Compress every file in the batch, not just the biggest one — several medium files can add up past the limit just as easily as one large one.
