Tip on reducing the size of your Winword 6.0 files

JAKARTA (JP): Have you ever noticed that Winword 6.0 files take up a lot of space in your hard disk or diskettes? That's right, unless you've tinkered with the Options, the size of a Winword 6.0 text-only document can be 50 percent larger than a WP 5.1 document containing the same amount of text.

This is not only a space requirement difficulty, it can entail security problems as well. The main thing is that, by default, Winword saves everything you type in your DOC files, including the first draft, revisions and the final copy of your documents.

Suppose you have typed in a confidential memo, highlight and delete everything, start typing an ordinary report and then pass the diskette to your company's desktop publisher, you may be giving away your company's secrets. Using the binary viewer of PCTools, for instance, anybody can read anything you've typed that you know for sure you have deleted.

The situation is even more potentially damaging when you send your files through E-mail systems. Not only are the files unnec essarily large, but other people can readily read things that you may have never intended to let them read.

Here's a way to avoid exposing yourself to this risk. Each time you've finished creating a document, click on Tools, then Options. A number of dialog boxes will appear. Click on Save, and uncheck the Allow Fast Saves option (see the accompanying illus tration).

To see the magnitude of the difference that it makes, here's some interesting data: I had a ten-page Winword 6.0 document, the file size of which was 43,008 bytes with the Allow Fast Saves option checked. After I had saved the same file with this option unchecked, the file size went down to 27,136 bytes. For compari son, the same file converted into WP 5.1 format took up only 28,368 bytes.

However, when working on long documents, you may save con siderable time by turning the option on again, it is simple.

-- Zatni Arbi