A fix to the ballooning PDF problem on Mac

For those of you who are Mac users, you know what I am talking about. In business, we often need to convert our Powerpoint slide decks or Word documents or even Excel sheets to PDF format. For Mac users, in recent years, these conversions have resulted in gigantic files, sometimes 10x bigger than the original files. It's ridiculously huge and unless you have Adobe Acrobat, you are having to resort to some other solutions to get this file reduced.

A few years ago, I learned about how to use Preview to reduce the files down through Quartz Filter. Then, I learned about ColorSync tool in Utilities. However, my original 3MB file still can only go down to 10MB vs the 30MB. 10MB is still too big to send through email. I also learn about the print preferences in Powerpoint, which reduces the PDF file at low setting to about 12MB. None of these options are acceptable. Then, someone posted a solution that is just as ridiculous as it comes, but it worked. Well, having spent so many years and hours looking for the solution, I thought I would share it here so you guys don't have to waste as much time as I had.

This solution only works for those with Office365 Online. First, open the file online. Then, download it as a PDF. Voilà! It is just that simple. Your PDF file is the same as the original. It's not as compressed as I would like, but it's not 10X bigger and it is small enough for me to send by email. That was all I need.

Hope this helps you! Happy emailing!