Home | Forums | Article Search | Subscribe & Shop | Contact Us | Log Out Balesio Fileminimizer Office 5.0 Email This Print This View My Personal Library Loading Zone September 2009 • Vol.9 Issue 9 Page(s) 80 in print issue Add To My Personal Library Balesio Fileminimizer Office 5.0 Fileminimizer Office $44.95 Balesio www.balesio.com CPUs: 3 One of the benefits of Office 2007 is that the new file formats (DOCX, XLSX, and PPTX) are considerably more space-efficient. Still, there are other ways to get more space-efficient files without switching versions of Office, such as Fileminimizer Office, which promises up to 98% compression for Microsoft Office files while maintaining compatibility. Although we never encountered compression rates this good, Office users who embed graphics in their files can expect very good results and significantly smaller files. The secret is that the software “speaks” DOC, XLS, PPT, DOCX, XLSX, and PPTX natively, allowing it to read, compress, and rewrite these files even if you don’t have Office installed. Unlike making a ZIP file, these files are still MS Office files that open directly in Office (and other compatible office programs). If you like, you could safely delete the original version after compressing it. An Office plug-in lets you compress files individually, but there are several batching methods that can compress hundreds of files at once. By default, Fileminimizer Office creates a new version of the file with a slightly different file name, but various options are very flexible. Compression rates are dependent on source materials; in our testing, files with lots of embedded graphics compressed best, though Office 2007 can help out here. A sample 5MB PPTX file compressed to 1.5MB at standard compression with almost no image quality degradation and to 1.2MB at high compression, although JPG artifacts were quite visible throughout. On the other hand, a 7.3MB DOC file (85 pages, with many screen shots and logos) compressed to 6.9MB with Fileminimizer Office, yet Office 2007 converted it to a 2MB DOCX file. Of course, Fileminimizer Office compressed that to a mere 684KB with no quality loss. Ordinary DOC and XLS files without graphics tended to be about half their size once the software was through with them. Today’s large hard drives may make the idea of smaller Office files silly, but don’t forget that emailing large files is still problematic. In these cases, Fileminimizer works well and is easy to use. by Warren Ernst  User Reviews Be the first to write a review of this product Want more information about a topic you found of interest while reading this article? Type a word or phrase that identifies the topic and click "Search" to find relevant articles from within our editorial database. Enter A Subject (key words or a phrase): ALL Words (‘digital’ AND ‘photography’) ANY Words (‘digital’ OR ‘photography’) Exact Match ('digital photography'- all words MUST appear together) Home      Copyright & Legal Information      Privacy Policy      Site Map      Contact Us Copyright © 2010 Sandhills Publishing Company U.S.A. All rights reserved.