Why is my PDF export so huge?

[dsaunier]

I have just started on a book layout. So far I only have 31 pages of text. No images of any kind. The Publisher file size is a measly 153K (as you would expect for text only). When I export (and I have tried a variety of PDF export presets and other settings), the file size balloons to 24-26MB!

All other topics I have seen on this issue seem to relate to images and color space. What could be going on here?

Thanks in advance!

[Old Bruce]

If there are no images then I would expect you have exported and chosen to convert the fonts (text) to curves.

[dsaunier]

Thank you! I do not see a place to control that setting. Where would that be?

[dsaunier]

Oh I found it, but it doesn't seem to be the case...

[dsaunier]

Then again, when I look at the file in Acrobat, it does indeed seem to have exported text as curves. You can see here, the block that says "introduction" is text and the body text below is curves. No idea how this happened.

[dsaunier]

I got to the bottom of this. When I changed the font of the body text, everything exported as expected. I suppose I did not have the font in question installed, though weird how I could select it.

[hart_art]

Instead of exporting as a PDF, try using the "print to PDF" feature.  Its an option for newer versions of Windows; otherwise you can download an app (like CutePDF).  Go under Print, and then select "print to PDF."  I've found the PDFs to be a lot smaller going this way.

[lacerto]

On 5/6/2022 at 6:56 PM, dsaunier said:

I suppose I did not have the font in question installed, though weird how I could select it.

The font might have been Garamond (Monotype), that comes with Microsoft Office 365 as a cloud font and is available for Office apps once downloaded (and embeddable when exporting from Office apps) but not directly available for other apps, so if available at all, would be converted to curves when tried to be exported.