Word Document File Sizes

Over the past month I’ve been trying Google Docs I’ve used it in the past in a pinch but recently I decided to use it on a more regular basis. My goal for this year is to “simplify” and doing that I’ve been looking at ways to be able to work more readily where ever I need to and by using Google apps have allowed me to do that.

I’ve been working on my current project “50 Biggest Website Mistakes” and decided to finish the writing in Google docs. I still save a copy to my hard drive and that’s when I noticed that the file size of the new documents that I created in Google Docs are 3-4 times smaller in file size.

At first I thought maybe it was because the document was shorter so I decided to copy the text in the Google Docs and open up Microsoft Word. Then I simply pasted that information into the new document and saved in the same .rtf format. (Just FYI rtf stands for Rich Text Format.)

Next I compared the two document file sizes the one created in Google Docs was just 7k in size where as the Microsoft Word Document was 34k in size nearly 5 x larger in file size. Ok, you’re probably thinking well 27kb is really not that big of a deal but over time it slow eats away at your valuable space on your hard drive. Just think I’ve been creating each of these 50 Biggest Website Mistakes as individual documents for various reasons. I could either consume 350Kb of space on my hard drive or 1,700Kb that’s 1,350Kb or 1.3 Mega Bytes of wasted space.

That can easily rack up several hundred Mega Bytes of storage in no time at all.

Just an observation I thought I would share.