Battling with Big File Sizes? Prepare and Share Large PDFs with Your Team.

Sharing, editing, and organizing many different types of large files within a team is commonplace nowadays – especially with more people working remotely and/or working in the same location. The world has changed. We’re often needing access to common documents — and big electronic documents at that — to get work done.

Sending, receiving, transferring, storing, and organizing files, including PDFs, can when they’re large files can be tricky. Factors that influence your success with large file transfers may include you or the receiver’s IT system drive space and structure, email provider limits on attachment sizes, bandwidth use, etc.

However, there are a few things you can do to get those big files shared and worked on with others on your team.

What you’ll learn.

• PDF files and their uses.
• Tips for sharing large PDF files with your team.
• PDF file sharing security concerns.
• Ensuring your team has access to the latest version of a PDF.

PDF files and their uses.

Portable document files (PDFs) were originally developed to help with the easy transfer of files between different systems and devices. Nowadays, they’ve gone beyond that. A popular choice for storing, distributing, accessing, and editing digital assets, PDFs are commonly used in businesses worldwide.

You can create dynamic and interactive PDF files that contain text, images, movies – all sorts of rich media, all of which can be accessed and viewed by others. PDFs can also be used for data collection and shared for editing and collaborating with other people and your wider team. PDFs can be filed and stored electronically on-premises or off-premises, uploaded, and downloaded from websites, used to archive and store business records, accessed via the cloud from a link only, and more.

Tips for sharing large PDF files with your team.

Prepare your PDFs and check out methods of transferring large PDFs that may work for you. There are a few things you can do to make sure your PDFs are shared smoothly with your team. Here are a few tips —

• Remove unnecessary pages — There may be pages or sections in your document that you don’t want or need to share with others or only certain sections that you want to share. It’s easy to split PDFs, delete PDF pages and extract PDF pages via online tools or within Adobe products to ensure you only share the content you intend to and need to.
• Combine and convert files — It may sound counterintuitive to combine files into one document when you’re trying to reduce file size, but it’s not. If you’ve got multiple Word or Excel files, consider converting them to PDF to drop the file sizes down. Then think about merging individual PDF files into cohesive documents.
• Optimize your PDFs — The PDF Optimizer PDF tool in Acrobat Pro will compress your file to reduce your overall file size. You can also use optimizing options to remove unnecessary digital content from your files, without losing content quality.
• Compress your PDF files — Drag and drop and compress a PDF online. Compressing a PDF reduces the file size and makes it easier to share and store documents when emailing and uploading.

• Cloud share — Cloud sharing is a great way to share files seamlessly with multiple people who need to access and edit documents at the same time and ensure you’re all working on the latest version. Links to access cloud-based documents are all that need to be sent, instead of the whole file. Adobe’s Document Cloud services offer real-time editing capabilities, making it easy for team members to collaborate on the latest information and give and receive feedback.

Use PDFs to collaborate on content with your team.

PDFs can be used for many different types of documents. They’re great for sharing documents and information in a secure way among team members.

While large PDFs and large files may seem like a barrier to file sharing, they don’t need to be. A bit of preparation when you create your PDFs will make them as small as possible to send and share. Then choose an appropriate file-sharing method, and your team will be on the task in no time, with you keeping track of progress along the way.

Frequently asked questions

Are there PDF file-sharing security concerns?

Secure transfer of documents is important to everyone, whether in business or at home. Make sure that you utilize the security and encryption tools for PDF files that you share and transfer where necessary to mitigate the risk of any potential tampering or unauthorized access.

• Protect your content – where appropriate make your PDFs read-only, add watermarks, and headers and footers, such as “confidential”, “draft” or “internal use only”. Use password protection to prevent authorized changes to content and/or who can open your documents.
• Identify your document collaborators — use digital IDs and certificate security that capture and track information on who has accessed and/or worked on your documents, such as their name, organization, email address, location, permissions and changes they have made.
• Have digital policies in place – communicate your digital or electronic policies with team members, especially regarding handling and collaborating on sensitive or important documents. If you’ve got a big team, consider whether digital rights management (DRM) services will help you control access to PDFs, undertake audits, and manage document versions.

How can I ensure my team access the latest version of a shared PDF file?

The best way to ensure your team is accessing and contributing to the latest version of shared PDF files is to either use cloud-based file-sharing services or use the online sharing feature in Adobe Pro.

Cloud-based file-sharing services provide a collaborative editing space that ensures everyone on your team is accessing the same file. You can also easily track any changes made to the file by your team and keep a history of each version.

Sharing online via Adobe Pro sends one link to multiple team members. They then use the link to access and edit the document from any device and you will see tracked responses. You also can set deadlines, make workflows, and send reminders from within the software.