PDF file size

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
January 28, 2020
2 replies
18 views

When printing 2019 returns to PDF the file sizes are simply huge compared to past years. For example, taking a return for a client who has been with me for years and has a nearly identical tax return, the size of the return has grown from 3MB to over 8MB. Nothing has changed. This is the same for all my returns.

This impacts the backups significantly given the size of the practice.

Anyone know what is going on? Are there any settings (like skipping a "searchable" feature or anything else) that can be set?

Lacerte Tax

This topic has been closed for replies.

itonewbie

Level 15

@IntuitAustin Hi, Austin, could you confirm why this may be the case and when/whether this would be rectified? Thanks!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------Still an AllStar

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pitstaxAuthor

Level 3

Don't know who "itonewbie" or "Austin" is. But does anyone have an answer to this? Maybe these large PDF sizes are not an issue to most people?

Just-Lisa-Now-

Intuit Community Champion

I see that complaint in here every year about ProSeries.

itonewbie is another user, and he tagged an Inuit Admin person (Austin) to reply to this post....this is a user to user message board, not Intuit direct support.

♪♫•*¨*•.¸¸♥Lisa♥¸¸.•*¨*•♫♪

J

jeff3331

Level 2

My research on the Adobe side indicates that Lacerte is downloading more fonts into the PDF files, including some fonts that are not used. some of the fonts are even in different languages and represents a standard download when the font is selected for the document. My understanding is that Lacerte can control this and restrict the download of the fonts to only those actually used in the document. This is a major issue as now I cannot email returns due to the large size of the files. This is a must fix issue.

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pitstaxAuthor

Level 3

Has anyone noted a fix for this. It makes emailing PDFs almost impossible.

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DatabaseRobert

Level 6

Several years ago the LTUG (Lacerte Tax User Group) on Yahoo! had one member point out the "Debenu PDF Automation" software. What you would do is print all of your Lacerte PDFs to <this folder over here>, then tell Debenu to "watch that folder". With a simple little script inside of debenu--which that recommending CPA even posted--Debenu would then strip out all of the useless font information, resulting in roughly half-sized PDFs. (We kept our "return printouts" and our "organizer PDFs" in separate locations, because we made a lot of custom changes to the Organizers.)
Unfortunately, Debenu has since been acquired by someone (maybe FoxIt?), and they are in the process of sunsetting the Debenu software as no longer supported.

If you can still get it while their site is up, I highly recommend the Debenu software, because it works so well and automatically. Large input files go here, output/much smaller files wind up there, and then we can just take the output files and handle them any way we choose.

Robert Kirk
LTUGtools

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