I have read every "help" source I can find so far and not found an answer to my question. I have created a word document which is a template for a book - it is not saved as a .dotx file, just a .docx. It contains some introductory text and illustrations, and a lot of empty space in a formatted heading layout for information to be pasted and photos to be inserted. The "empty" document is 1.2 MB, of which the illustrations are 1.1 MB. The full collection of 33 photos (JPEG files) to be inserted is 2.8 MB - average photo size is 85 KB. Once the text is pasted in to fill the empy space, the file is 1.4 MB (this includes the original 1.2 MB of the template file). When the 2.8 MB of photos are added, the file is 39.4 MB. How can that be, when the individual elements of the file total about 3.2 MB? All the photos have been compressed.
What else can I do to reduce the size of the file?