Compressing a PDF for a court upload portal
Upload limits are enforced by a file-size check, not by a warning. If a bundle is rejected, the file has to come down — and the choice you make decides whether the text survives.
Two different operations, often confused
Repacking rewrites the file’s internal structure without touching the pages. Text stays selectable, quality is untouched, and the saving is modest — usually single-digit percentages, occasionally more when the producer left a lot of dead objects behind.
Re-encoding renders each page as an image and rebuilds the PDF from those images. That is where the large savings come from, and it is also where the text layer disappears: a 90 MB bundle can drop to 8 MB and stop being searchable, citable or copyable in the same operation.
Deciding which one you need
If the bundle is being filed and may be quoted later, repack first and check the result. If it is still too large, re-encode at 150 DPI, which usually keeps a page readable on screen and in print while cutting size sharply. Drop to 96 DPI only when the limit is severe and the bundle is being filed for completeness rather than for reading.
Either way, open the output and check the page count and the last page before filing. A bundle that fits the portal but lost pages is worse than one that was refused.
What it will not do
It will not split the bundle into parts to fit a limit — that is the split tool’s job, and doing it deliberately (with an index) is better than doing it by accident. It also cannot make an already-tightly-packed text PDF dramatically smaller without re-encoding.
Will re-encoding make the text unsearchable?+
Yes. Pages become images, so text selection and search stop working. Choose repacking if the bundle may need to be quoted or searched later.
Why did my file only shrink by 3%?+
That is normal for a text-heavy PDF that was already well produced. The large savings come from re-encoding scanned or image-heavy pages.
Is the bundle uploaded?+
No. Compression runs in the browser, which also means there is no queue and no upload time on a 90 MB file.
Files are processed in the browser tab and are never uploaded. Slate is not legal advice or a case management system.