I am working in Adobe Indesign CS3 (I know...old version-but it's what my employer has). I'm working in a file that has only text and shapes and the file is 1.5 MB. Is there a way to reduce this size?

Thank you in advance.

Robin

Exporting to IDML does reduce on filesize but can be very time consuming when working over network.

I have a document with linked PSDs thats becoming a 5Gb file. Thats insane – that I recall the whole point of linking is not to have such huge files. Also when exporting doesn't it raster the image to size? why would it carry all of that information along?

The only way to maintain filesizes is keep on exporting to idml - its like a detox save ... xD

The IDML export and then INDD re-save from the IDML works well for downsize the file.
But it's a very boring job if you have to do it with all your Indesign's Files !!!!

It could be a great leap forward if adobe implement a optimised save/convert function to
save Indesign's file directly at the correct size ?!

Well, that's the advancement of technology. On a 64 bit system, Indesign uses approx. 580 MB of RAM just after the start, with no document open.

Also simply doing a fresh "SAVE AS" and overwriting your file can cut down the size, sometimes significantly. The size tends to accumulate as you do regular SAVEs, but SAVE AS seems to write a fresh/optimized copy.

Have you tried saving the document as an IDML and then opening that then resaving as an INDD file. We have some files that have been worked on a lot over the years and they become bloated. Usually doing the IDML save gets rid of a lot of the stuff you don't need. It may not work but I'd give it a go.