Before you do this you might want to look at how the bmps have been inserted
in the document. Sometimes screenshots get inserted as editable objects and
that really balloons the file size. You can check easily by turning field
codes on (Alt-F9) - if the bitmaps have been inserted as objects you'll see
an "EMBED" code with the name of the object editing tool.

Unlinking the fields (Ctrl-6 or Ctrl-Shift-F9) should give you a normal
image in the file.

--
Margaret Aldis - Microsoft Word MVP
Syntagma partnership site: http://www.syntagma.co.uk
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.word.mvps.org

"PeterK" wrote in message
...
I've been presented with 20 Word files (over 21Mb) where the author has
inserted screenshots using alt + prt scn and ctrl + v. I estimate that
converting the graphics (24bit) to 8 colour (6 bit?)gif's and reducing the
"bpi" will cut the document sizes down by 60+%.

So far the only method I have identified is to save each doc as an html
file, batch convert the image files to gif , perform a find and replace of
*.jpg to *.gif on the html doc and the index file , open the html doc and
save as a Word doc. The files are heavily hyperlinked and bookmarked and
indexed and I don't want to lose these features.

Have I identified the only solution or is there a better way? - my
current
method is far quicker than a cut , reformat and paste back image by image.