How to reduce PDF size for email
Practical ways to get a PDF under an email attachment limit: compress, extract pages or split.
Know the limit
Most email services cap attachments at roughly 20–25 MB, and some workplace systems set lower limits. Check your provider's limit, then aim comfortably under it — encoding for email adds some overhead to every attachment.
Option 1: compress
Open Compress PDF, keep the Recommended level and compress. For scanned or photo-heavy documents this is usually enough on its own.
Remember that compressed pages become images, so text can no longer be selected or searched. That is fine for scans, but think twice for documents the recipient needs to copy text from.
Option 2: send only what's needed
Often the recipient needs a few pages, not the whole file. Use Split PDF to extract just those pages, for example 1-2, 7 — the pages are copied exactly with no quality loss.
Option 3: send in parts
If every page is needed and the file is still too large, extract it in sections (for example pages 1-20 and 21-40) and send them in separate emails, numbering the subject lines so nothing is missed.