How to compress PDF files in monday.com
Key takeaways
- Can you compress a PDF inside monday.com?
- Yes. The File Compress app by ColumnMate reads a PDF from a Files column, optimizes its structure, and uploads the smaller file back to the board.
- Does compressing a PDF in monday.com change how the pages look?
- No. File Compress rewrites the file with object streams and removes metadata. It does not downsample images or change layout, so the pages are pixel-identical.
- How much smaller do PDFs get?
- It varies. Text-heavy and exported PDFs often shrink 5–25%. PDFs that are mostly scanned images see less, because the images themselves are not re-compressed.
- What if a PDF is encrypted or password-protected?
- File Compress attempts to load it while ignoring encryption. If it cannot process the file, it skips it and leaves the original in place.
Compressing a PDF in monday.com is done with the File Compress app by ColumnMate. It loads the PDF from a Files column with the pdf-lib library, rewrites it using cross-reference object streams, strips document metadata, and uploads the smaller file back to the board. The Portable Document Format allows a lot of redundant internal structure, and that is what gets removed.
What "compressing a PDF" actually means here
There are two ways to make a PDF smaller. The first is structural: deduplicate objects, pack them into compressed streams, and drop metadata. This is lossless — every page, glyph, and form field is untouched. The second is image downsampling: re-encode the pictures inside the PDF at a lower resolution. That is lossy and can visibly degrade scans.
File Compress does the first. Your pages come out identical.
Why choose lossless structural optimization?
Because a monday.com board is a system of record. A contract, a signed proposal, or a spec sheet needs to stay exactly as approved. Structural optimization shrinks the file without any risk of someone later noticing that a diagram went soft or a signature blurred.
Step by step
- An admin installs File Compress from the monday.com marketplace.
- Open the board with the PDF and go to the automation center.
- Add a Compress PDFs recipe. Pick a trigger — when a status changes to optimize documents once they are final, or when a button is clicked to do it on demand per item.
- Set the source column, the target column, and a compression level. For PDFs, medium and high also clear metadata fields (title, author, subject, keywords, producer, creator); low keeps them.
- Turn it on. When the trigger fires, the optimized PDF appears in the target column.
What to expect by PDF type
| PDF source | Typical reduction | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Word / Google Docs export | 10–25% | Lots of redundant structure |
| Design tool export (InDesign, Figma) | 5–20% | Depends on embedded fonts and images |
| Scanned document | 2–10% | Weight is in the page images, not the structure |
| Already-optimized PDF | 0%, skipped | File Compress keeps the original |
When structural optimization is not enough
If a PDF is 40MB because it is 60 scanned pages at 600 DPI, the fix is upstream: scan at 200–300 DPI, or run the pages through image compression before assembling the PDF. See how to reduce PDF file size in monday.com for the decision tree. Adobe's own guidance on PDF optimization covers the image-downsampling side if you have Acrobat.
Doing it for every PDF on a board
Contracts, invoices, and reports that arrive on a board through a status change or a form can be compressed automatically. Set up an automation that compresses PDFs when a file is uploaded or a status flips to "Received".
The short version
File Compress compresses PDFs in monday.com losslessly — object streams plus metadata removal, no image downsampling, no layout change. Text and exported PDFs shrink noticeably; scan-heavy PDFs need upstream image compression. Use medium or high to also strip metadata. See the setup guide for the walkthrough.
Frequently asked questions
- How do I compress a PDF in monday.com without downloading it?
- Install File Compress from the monday.com marketplace and add a Compress PDFs recipe in the board's automation center, with a trigger, a source column, a target column, and a level. When the trigger fires, the optimized PDF is written back automatically.
- Will compression break form fields or links in the PDF?
- No. Structural optimization with object streams keeps interactive form fields, bookmarks, and hyperlinks intact.
- Why did my PDF barely get smaller?
- If the PDF is mostly high-resolution scanned pages, most of its weight is in the embedded images, which structural optimization does not re-encode. Compressing those before they become a PDF is more effective.
- Does the compressed PDF lose any pages or content?
- No pages or text are removed. Only redundant structure and document metadata such as author and producer fields are dropped.
- Is there a size limit for PDFs?
- Files up to 500MB are supported, matching the monday.com upload limit.
Zack
File Compress Developer at ColumnMate. Writes about file management, storage, and automation inside monday.com.
Related reading
Compress and zip files without leaving monday.com
File Compress runs on your board. 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
