When a Word file is saved in rtf format its size can increase dramatically, especially if it contains images. My file of Great English Mistakes is 937 Kb as a doc but expanded to 25,042 Kb when I saved it as an rtf. As this conversion is a necessary part of creating an epub file it is a real problem.
After some searching on the Internet I came across Microsoft’s Fix-It. It explains:
This functionality is by design in Microsoft Word [now there’s a surprise – PH]. If an EMF, a PNG, a GIF, or a JPEG graphic is inserted into a Word document, when the document is saved, two copies of the graphic are saved in the document. Graphics are saved in the applicable EMF, PNG, GIF, or JPEG format and are also converted to WMF (Windows Metafile) format.
The same page explains that this can be fixed by doing something mysterious to the Registry (no thanks) but also offers a wizard to do it for you. I have used this wizard. and it has produced a manageable rtf of 2,374 Kb. As far as I can see there is no difference between the resulting rtf and the original doc.
