Document size (2002 SP2)

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I create and edit docs at both work and home. At work I have Word 2000. At home I have Word 2002.

If I take a doc created at work on Word2000, bring it home, make a minor editing change (anything at all) and save it, it grows by 300-400k. One I am working on now grows from 123k to 490k. I believe that the options on both programs are set the same. In Word2002, I have save smart tags and linguistics data turned off.

Is there any method or app that can show me what is using the extra space so I can make adjustments?

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Do you have Fast Save turned on at home (in the Save tab of Tools | Options…)? This is a notorious cause of document bloat (and corruption).

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Nope. Fast saves are off.

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The only way I can think of that you might find something is to save the two versions as rtf files and then open them in a text editor such as Notepad. Then copy the contents into two Word documents and run Compare to highlight any differences.

Problem is the differences might be lost in the rtf versions and what you see may not be too meaningful. However, as I said, it is the only way I can think of to look inside a document.

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I took a look at the files using a tool called BinToText (http://www.foundstone.com/resources/proddesc/bintext.htm). I used this tool to save text copies of the files. I then ran them through a notepad program and a compare program. Conclusion: The bigger file has more stuff in it.

Since I don’t know the internal structure of these files, I don’t know what I am looking at.

It would seem like there would be an opportunity for someone with some knowledge and time on their hands to write a utility to identify what is going on. I’m sure that I am not the only one with this problem. Maybe MS is burying secret stuff in the 2002 file…

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Have you tried saving the document (at home) as HTML, then saving that as a Word document again (after closing and reopening)?
1. Does that reduce the size of the document?
2. Does the size increase again when you edit it as a Word-document?

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I don’t have Word 2002, but your finding doesn’t surprise me. I noticed the same thing when I used Word 97 & Word 2000. Each newer version has more “features” & therefore more pointers in the internal structure. This is especially true if your document contains something where the features have been “improved”. e.g. I noticed that documents with tables were larger in Word 2000, as compared with 97.
Cheers,

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Phil,

Yes, word docs become larger with each version, but usually not as much as described in this thread. In my experience, the increase in size is some 10% to 20%, not 300% as in “from 123k to 490k”. So there must be strange here.

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