[MS Office - 2007] .docx file size bloat when printing file with multiple pictures.

[pete]

Today we found out that a 12MB, 23 page .docx (tech coursework with roughly 2 pictures a page) will bloat to 525MB when being sent across the network to the printer. The pictures have been compressed using Word's built-in widget.

If I test it using a .pdf printer installed on my local machine it'll do the same thing, resulting in a 31MB .pdf

Is there any workaround / fix for this as I'm getting congestion on our colour copiers (s'coursework deadline time)?

[SYNACK]

Its more to do with the printer drivers and print processor in use as it renders it out uncompressed to the printer. You could send out the jobs a couple of pages at a time or try configuring it with a different driver or print processor. We just chucked in more memory to sort it with most of our colour printers, I think that all of ours have 512MB of RAM now and we no longer have any issues with it. Before that we had to get people to print only a few pages of photos at a time because when converted to RAW format they were huge, of course few listened and the printers kept crashing until we upped the RAM.

[pete]

Yeah, problem is it's a stonking great Bizhub with a gig of ram doing the printing, not a weedy HP thing. The printer copes, it's just the time taken to spool the job.

[SYNACK]

Are you using PS or PCL drivers, the PS ones usually generate bigger files. Do you have GB ethernet to the copier? You could also drop the default DPI in the print driver which will drop the quality and spooler job size.

[Arthur]

Yeah, problem is it's a stonking great Bizhub with a gig of ram doing the printing, not a weedy HP thing. The printer copes, it's just the time taken to spool the job.

It might also be worth trying the XPS drivers for your BizHub's, assuming they are available for your particular copiers and you are using a supported operating system.

XPS is an XML-based (more specifically XAML-based) color-managed device and resolution independent vector-based paged document format which encapsulates an exact representation of the actual printed output. XPS documents are packed in a ZIP container along with text, fonts, raster images, 2D vector graphics and DRM information. For printers supporting XPS, this eliminates an intermediate conversion to a printer-specific language, increasing the reliability and fidelity of the printed output.

[pete]

Sorry, missed the updates on this. The Bizhub only has a 100M nic and we're using PCL drivers. I'm loath to drop the DPI because it's finished coursework, but testing can't hurt.

XPS drivers may be worth a try.