Rein In Those MS Word RTF Files with Embedded Images

It's always perplexed me how huge Word documents can become when images are embedded in them. It doesn't seem to happen when files are saved in the default .DOC format--only when they're saved in the .RTF format.

An item on p. 79 of the 11/20/04 PC Magazine gave me the answer. Two copies of each image are saved within an .RTF file, including one in the bloated Windows Metafile (WMF) format.

There's a simple registry tweak to prevent Word from creating the WMF copy. If you don't have access to the issue (which doesn't appear to be online yet), check out Microsoft's Knowledgebase Article 224663.

The tweak works. I had a user manual with a lot of screenshots which was over 300 MB and took forever to load. After applying the registry tweak, I opened the file, made a tiny edit to it, and saved it . . . as an 8 MB file.