PDF management - How to compress a PDF

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Purpose: The eFiling website requires that PDF documents not exceed 10MB for Circuit Court documents and 20MB for Supreme Court/Court of Appeals documents. This guide contains suggestions for shrinking or compressing a PDF to reduce the file size.

Applicable Users: eFile users 

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Note: Many third-party sites offer options for compressing PDFs. These sites are not affiliated with the Wisconsin Court System. As such, the Wisconsin Court System cannot confirm the security of third-party sites. Use them at your own risk.

Before downloading anything onto your computer, work with your IT department. Understand what happens to a document once you utilize the software, especially if the document contains confidential information. For instance, some free compression applications may save a document copy to the cloud for future access.

Compress a PDF with Adobe Acrobat Pro

1. Using Adobe Acrobat Pro, use the menu option File > Compress PDF or Reduce File Size.
2. Select a location to Save your compressed PDF file.

Compress a PDF with a third-party website

Compress a PDF document using www.ilovepdf.com

1. Navigate to ilovepdf.com using a web browser like Chrome.
2. Select Compress PDF.
   
3. Click [Select PDF files] and then select the PDF you wish to reduce in file size.
   
4. Select the Compression Level from the options on the right side of the page. If these options are not visible, they can be accessed via the gear icon.
   
   Selecting a higher compression level may reduce the quality of the PDF.
5. Select [Compress PDF] on the lower right.
   
6. Once the compression is complete, select [Download compressed PDF].
   Note that your new file size appears on this screen.
   
7. Once your document has been downloaded, open it to ensure it is still of high enough quality to submit, then proceed with the eFiling process.

Other third-party site options

Other third-party sites offer similar PDF-compression tools. The following sites may be of assistance. Note that these sites apply to the same disclaimer above. Users access these sites at their own risk:

• pdf2go.com
• smallpdf.com

Additional document troubleshooting tools

• If compressing your PDF compromises the file quality, you may be able to split your PDF into multiple smaller-sized documents. Steps for splitting a PDF are located in the How to split a PDF article. The above-referenced third-party sites also offer tools for splitting PDFs.
  • Note: Depending on the document type, the clerk may reject your document if it is not submitted in one single PDF file.

Additional tips and tricks for troubleshooting document issues can be found in the Troubleshooting document issues article.