How to Re-size/Save and Email Scanned Documents Most Efficiently

By Haresh Karamchandani

I got an Invitation to Bid from a UN organization yesterday that was 21 pages long! Normally I would just scan a document on my Dell V305 Scanner, save it on my desktop and then attach to my Outlook email. The size would be in excess of 1MB per page and would take very long to send as the internet speeds here in Liberia are pretty slow.

This time around I had to figure out an easier and faster method.

This is how I went about it:

Step 1 

Open “Windows Fax and Scanner” from your start menu.

Step 2  

Lay the document to be scanned in the flatbed scanner, then click on New Scan.

The document will be scanned onto your computer. Then click on save image and save it on your desktop by giving it a suitable name. In my case I named it UN ITB for Tools page 1.

Step 3  

Continue the same process until you have scanned and saved all the pages on your computer desktop.

Step 4 

Go back to your desktop and open the saved page 1 with “Microsoft Office Picture Manager”.

Step 5

The document will open then click on Edit Pictures…, Then click on Compress Pictures and

Choose Compress for document. The file will compress by at least 90%!. My document

Compressed from a 1 MB size to 70 KBs. The click on file and save the document before you close it.

Step 6 

Continue the same procedure as in Step 5 for all the remaining pages on your Desktop.

Finally Step 7 

Open Outlook Express email. Open new email. Then attach the pages one by one, or alternatively you could further compress all the pages in 1 zipped folder and then attach this zipped folder to the email and send in one go!