How to reduce a PDF to under 2 MB

Upload forms love round limits: 1 or 2 MB on many government and university portals, 5 MB on job boards, 25 MB for attachments on the most common email services. A scanned application or a PDF built from phone photos blows past those instantly. The fix is rarely "compress harder"; it is finding what actually makes the file heavy and removing that first.

Find out what kind of PDF you have

Open the file and try to select a word of text.

• Text selects normally: the PDF was exported from a word processor or a website. Text and vector graphics are tiny; a 30-page contract is often 200 to 500 KB. If such a file is over 2 MB, the weight is in embedded images, such as photos, logos at print resolution or full-page backgrounds.
• Nothing selects, or the whole page highlights as one block: the pages are images. Scans and photo-based PDFs fall here, and they compress very well.
• A mix: a typed document with a few scanned attachments at the end. Treat the two parts differently.

Also check the page count against the file size. A 12 MB scan of 6 pages averages 2 MB per page, so reaching 2 MB in total means bringing each page down to roughly 300 KB.

Step 1: remove pages you do not need

Every removed page is a saving with zero quality loss, so this always comes first. Typical candidates are blank backs of double-sided scans, cover sheets, instruction pages from the form itself and duplicate copies.

Delete PDF pages shows the pages as a grid of numbers; tap the ones to drop and download a trimmed copy. Removing 10 scanned pages from a 40-page scan cuts about a quarter of the size.

Step 2: compress

Compress PDF has two engines, and choosing the right one matters more than the slider.

In the browser: best for scans

The default path keeps the file on your device. Each page is redrawn at about 108 dpi and saved as a JPEG at the quality you set (30 to 95, default 70). A scan at 300 dpi carries about eight times as many pixels, which is where the big savings come from.

• 70: comfortable reading; a typical 30 MB scan lands in the 3 to 6 MB range.
• 50 to 60: the usual setting for a 2 MB target. Slight blur at text edges, fine for forms, certificates and IDs you only need to submit.
• Below 45: halos and blocks on photos and coloured backgrounds. Only to squeeze under a strict limit.

The trade-off is that every page becomes a picture: text can no longer be selected or searched, and links and form fields stop working. For scans this changes nothing, since they were pictures already. If you get the original back unchanged, the rebuilt file would have been larger, which means the PDF is mostly text and the browser method is the wrong tool for it.

On the server: best for typed documents with images

The server option uses Ghostscript, which keeps text as real text and only downsamples the embedded images. Slider values below 50 select the screen profile (around 72 dpi images), 50 to 84 the ebook profile (around 150 dpi), 85 and above the printer profile. For a CV with a photo or a report full of charts, ebook usually gives the best size for the quality. Without an account there is one server run a day; files are deleted about an hour after the job starts.

Aim for the highest quality that fits. Start at 60, check the result, and only go lower if you are still over the limit.

Step 3: if it is still too big

• Split the document. Many portals have several upload fields, such as "passport", "diploma", "transcript". Split PDF by ranges gives one file per section, and each part is far easier to keep under 2 MB. Pages vary in weight, so leave some margin.
• Submit a page as an image. When a portal accepts JPG for a single-page document, PDF to JPG at 2x and quality 80 to 90 produces a sharp, compact image. At 1x, body text becomes hard to read when zoomed.
• Rescan at a lower resolution. If you control the scanner, 150 to 200 dpi in greyscale is plenty for text documents and starts out a fraction of the size of a 600 dpi colour scan. Colour is only worth it for stamps, signatures in blue ink or photos.

Built-in options

• Preview on a Mac: File → Export with the Reduce File Size filter. Quick, but it shrinks images very aggressively and offers no control, so check scans for readability.
• Word: when saving a document as PDF, choose the minimum size option instead of standard. For documents you wrote, this is often enough, and text stays text.
• Windows and phones: there is no general-purpose built-in PDF compressor. Printing to PDF does not reduce embedded images in a predictable way.

Typical targets

• Government or university portal, 2 MB: delete extra pages, browser compression at 50 to 60. A 10-page scan usually fits.
• Job application, 5 MB: a CV exported from a word processor is already small. If it is not, a large photo is the cause; use the server ebook profile so the text stays selectable for screening software.
• Email, 25 MB: compression at 70 is usually enough even for long scans. Above that, split the file or share a link.
• Signed contract to return: compress before signing, not after, if the signature is a certificate-based digital signature; any change afterwards invalidates it.

Troubleshooting

• The size did not change. The file is mostly text. Use the server engine, or check for a few huge images and remove those pages.
• The file is password-protected. Compression cannot read encrypted files. Unlock it with the password you have, compress, then protect it again if needed.
• Small print became fuzzy. Raise the quality, or use the server engine, which does not rasterise text.
• The portal needs searchable text. After browser compression, OCR PDF adds a text layer on top of the page images.
• The result is smaller but still slightly over. Remove one more page, or step the slider down by 10 rather than jumping to the minimum.

Checklist

1. Check whether the PDF is scanned or typed.
2. Delete blank and unnecessary pages.
3. Scans: browser compression at 60. Typed with images: server ebook.
4. Zoom into the smallest print before uploading.
5. Still too big: split into sections or lower the quality by 10.
6. Keep the original; compress a copy.

Everything on the browser path runs on your device, so documents such as IDs, contracts and tax forms are never uploaded.