Over 11 hours later and I STILL have NOT recieved my Activation Codes.

Paid either $75 or $100 for this software a few months ago, and I must say it is worth every penny. If you deal with many large files, this software rocks.

when i try to regester first, I get regestration sucsussful then on next stage it tries to regester on like . at this stage Iget the error mesege " your licence information could not be foune on the activation erver" consequency I can not load any file in to the program. help anyone?

If you resize images before inserting into Word, use a proper compresssion program like WinRar, and save in rich text format first, you'll get the minimum file size without loss of quality.

Do note that if you paste large images directly into Word and make them much smaller in Word itself, they'll still be stored in Word with a large/very large file size, affecting the document file size drastically.

Today's GOTD is only of any use to send strictly limited file sizes at very reduced quality.

Today's large HDD capacities resulted from demand from people who need more space for working audio and video files, which typically are much larger than the final audio or video. Even when 160TB drives become available, those who work extensively with audio and video will continue to be concerned with real estate for their working files. This kind of software will therefore continue to be relevant and useful for reserving a greater proportion of HDD space for multimedia-heavy projects. The smaller you can keep your Office files, the better.

Comments about the cost & availability of massive hard drives are, imho, totally irrelevant, and in some cases border on bragging. People buy software to fill a personal need, and if a particular software doesn't fill a need for you, please refrain from inane comments and just pass on the offer.

The GOTD team do a great job of offering a variety of software to fill a variety of needs, and in this particular case the need to reduce file sizes for the purposes of emailing is one - not only because some people have size limitations on what they can send/receive and to preserve bandwidth, as has already been mentioned, but also because there are still many, many people who are on dialup.

Another need would be for portability - to fit files on pen/thumb/flash drives. There are still plenty of the older, smaller capacity ones around (I have a 64Mb one), and programs like this extend their lifespan.

Despite the ever increasing size and decreasing price of storage devices, it can still be useful to reduce the size of Office documents.

The main reason for this is for emailing files. Most email servers will reject emails larger than about 10 megabytes in size. Also, sometimes it can be useful to email small files, so that it does not take a long time for recipient to download the email - the same consideration about the time to download files can also apply if you make documents available for download on a website.

Certainly for cases where the files are not going to emailed or uploaded to a website, there quite probably will be no need to use software like this, as the compression process will reduce the quality of images in the compressed documents.

Like many others here I´m stuck with the activation problem.
After successful online registration the activation server don´t know my activation data. The only way I found to try activation again is to set the system date to 3 days in the future. Then activation dialog is the only thing that is still working.

Oh, almost forgot... their website also offers a free product called FILEminimizer Pictures. Does decent minimizing and conversions, with options for lossless compressions and retention of EXIF info, etc. Kinda wish they would have blended its capabilities with today's GAOTD offering.

The bad:
- The registration. It doesn't work. I got my code by registering on the site, got the email and entered them in the 3 fields. It says "Your license information could not be found on the Activation Server". I'm using the exact codes received in the email.
- The compression technique. This is a little bad, but mostly good. So see the "The good" section.
- The compression technique #2: It doesn't always make images smaller. I have one .PNG that is 438 bytes and the tool makes it 573 bytes.

The good:
- The compression technique. It's a good clever technique, mostly optimizing based on lowering the DPI. For computer-based viewing, this works well. The problem is for files that are intended to be printed - this turns these pictures into horrible, mangled versions of their previous self. But if you're not planning to print your Office docs, this technique is really good.

I haven't tested on embedded video (like PowerPoint 2010), but that would be interesting to see if it does do any compression of videos.

I downloaded, installed, and requested a license over 2 hours ago and have not received email with the registration code. After waiting about 30 minutes, I went back and again requested the registration code using a different email address and still haven't received a response.
Is anyone else experiencing a delay receiving a reply from Balesio?

FILEminimizer Office is a nice app that does what it says, making Ofc docs smaller, mainly by cutting data from images in those docs. It does not require MS Ofc, but works on files MS Ofc creates -- note that it did not work to compress Word format .doc & .docx files that I created using Libre Ofc [I plugged in an external hdd & fired up the latest Libre Ofc portable]. To test I inserted a somewhat high contrast, un-edited, un-optimized image file into a new Word 2007 doc in 3 formats, & depending on the image format & level of compression set in FILEminimizer Office, you could see a *slight*, but generally acceptable difference in the optimized file [more info on test results below]. FILEminimizer Office isn't a bad install, but it would not activate for me, saying the company's server had no record of my license -- I saw today's GOTD on dealnews & fatwallet so it's fair to expect their servers are getting hammered. During the attempted activations [I tried several times] I read that you have 3 days or so to activate after entering your key, but, I don't know if activation will work later today, if I'll get a chance to try it later today, if activation will work tomorrow since the GOTD will then be officially over etc...

Installation adds the program's folder with 17 files taking up ~10 MB. Configuration data's stored in a FILEminimizer folder under User App/Application Data. FILEminimizer itself needs/uses 1 registry key, but installation added 335 new entries, most of them Windows shell related + an uninstall key. It seems to work equally well in XP Pro & win7 64, with no unusual dependencies that I could see using the latest Process Explorer [SysInternals -- microsoft.com]. Using FILEminimizer Ofc you import one or more files -- you can import several at once, but I didn't see an option to import a complete folder -- then click Optimize or Pack & Go [which adds the results to an e-mail]. When it's done optimizing there's a Back button to take you to the original screen or window, but the list of files will be empty. While there's a slider to choose between Strong, Standard, & Low Compression, you can also customize the compression settings, separate from settings for the app itself, where you can set behavior like how files should be named, if the original should be deleted etc.

To test FILEminimizer Ofc I opened a new Word 2007 doc, inserting a ~28 MB .tif file, & copies of that file reduced to 5X7" at 300 dpi in .png & .jpg formats [I created the ~5 MB .png & 694 KB .jpg using Paintshop Photo Pro X3 at default settings, figuring PPP X3 was something more people would likely have]. The resulting .docx file was just over 8 MB -- the optimized results were 4.33, 4.11, & 4 MB setting the slider to Low, Std., & High compression. A 2nd .docx with just the .png image went from ~3.5 MB to ~65 KB at std compression. Changes to the 3 images were all more than acceptable *on-screen* -- how well they'd print is a different matter, depending in large part on the printer & paper you used.

Overall I've no doubt you could do a better job making images smaller using P/Shop, but that can take a bit of time, & it can be difficult if you're trying to reconstruct a doc without the originals -- FILEminimizer Ofc is easy & quick enough that if you don't like the results, you won't feel bad deleting them. :-)

When it comes to printing [a major complaint about making image files small] about all I can say is mileage will vary -- FWIW 1) fewer people print nowadays, & 2) higher rez doesn't guarantee a good print, just like lower rez doesn't guarantee a bad one... Ink & toner are expensive, so many people use so-called refurb or aftermarket cartridges, toner, &/or inks -- the colors & results are not always as good as the OEM factory stuff. Likewise printer drivers/apps vary -- I've got a more expensive Epson 6 color photo printer on my desk that does much poorer quality mid-range prints than our cheaper, 4 color Canon's, though it's certainly more capable, doing nice photos on photo paper & good low rez prints from web pages.

Activation - I had similar issues:

1. As I had version 5, I was sent version 5 despite applying for 6!
2. I have a second email address and I was delivered version 6. However, it is rather poor being sent the previous serial number when applying for a different version.
3. I also had activation problems and tried auto and manual, both failed.
4. However, a small window appears (the GAOTD activation process) and clicking on that leads to the GAOTD successful activation page, which I assume means it has activated?
5. I also re-tried ensuring I had run as Administrator but the process was the same.OS is Windows 7 x64

I'm a graphics guy so I always appreciate the chance to look at this type of software.
I do have need for this functionality. I maintain several repositories that contain tons of excel spreadsheets, powerpoint presentations, and word docs. So, anything to keep the size down is appreciated.

In a nutshell, this software does a decent job.

A few notes (based on a few very hurried tests):

1. Retention of image quality seems to greatly depend on the format of the source image, as the product only outputs jpeg. If the embedded image is jpeg, logically the output quality is fine. But if, per se, it's a tiff format, the image suffers in the conversion process and the quality is noticeably off.

2. I don't quite get the naming of the "View File" button. For example, when I do a compress of a Word document, I get a Word 97 - 2003 .doc file. At his time, the "View File" button becomes activated. When I click on it, it gives me a "Save" window. If I do then choose to "save", it lets me save as either a Word 2007 .docx file or a Word 2007 macro-enabled .docm file. Interesting feature... but why call it "View File"? And, on a side note, why is the size of the new .docx/.docm file noticeably smaller than the original compressed .doc file size (10 to 25%)? Is Word 2007 that much more efficient?

3. It has a nice Search File feature with a few useful filters (size limit, date, etc.).

4. Just how many "Optimize File" triggers do you need? It's in the File menu pulldown, it's an icon, it's an option in the task list, and it's a button. All on the same main screen. Makes for a pretty cluttered screen.

correction :

you uninstalle the old fileminimizer.

from jens

@ Minnesota Walrus # 48

It is baffling that posts like yours (just empty words pointing finger at others) are passing moderation... What is even more baffling is to see that people are showing day-after-day close to no appreciation to the GOTD team and the developer of the day for their generosity and efforts!

When a specific post or a promotion is not what you want to read/download just browse further without polluting the daily thread with your childish nonsense.

Imagine one day you click the GOTD bookmark and read in your browser: "Sorry GOTD does no longer exist... Too much moaning and pointless criticism so we took the page down... Go and get your freebies somewhere else!"... You and people like yourself really deserve that!

about registration failure

I had had fileminimizer 5.0 installed

I requested a new license and got the exactly the license.

I had to request an activation and so on....

It did not work.

if you like me have had fileminimizer 5.0 installed you must delete the activation file mually.

the name is : pmconfig.cfg

it will be placed in a folder called application data if you got windows xp.

delete the file and the app.

run the new fileminimizer and install your license.

it works !

it is quite right that this program very effectly can compress for instace wod files.

fron jens

First you request a serial number with the url in the readme file.
You have to use a mailaddress where you can receive that serialnumber.

This is going smooth and fast.

Then you register in to parts.
part 1: enter the serialnumber and the other 2 fields and hit "register" (from the mail).

No problem sofar, you are registered, but for only three days !!

Part 2:
Now a second window pops up, you have to activate your registration to make it indefinite within 3 days or you will be having a trial for 30 days again with only 12 files to minimize

You can chooose internet, manual. later.
"Later" will only pospone, "manual" will need you to mail with balesio
so when you choose "internet" activation does not work, you get the message "Your licence information could not be found on the Activation server"

So you can for 3 days minimize so many files as you like, but in three days you will be in trial again aand every minimize will count, you have only 12 files to go.

I'm not allone, see Whiterabbit-uk, #44, Antonio Mungioli, #46 and IVAN IVANOV, #39

W h a t. . i s. . w r o n g. . h e r e ?

To # 46:

Obviously- this giveaway has a problem with activation on 64- bit systems.

Also obviously- no support from the authors, nor from GOTD.

What do we do?

Simple- uninstall the program…

I've used the Powerpoint version of this software for years (obtained from this site). For PPT at least, it really does compress files by 90% with little to no loss. Probably not as good at other files though. It does this mostly by using compression that can be done directly within PPT. But I appreciate the one-click solution. Been waiting for this one to reappear here since I got a new PC, and am grateful.

I first tried tried their PowerPointminimizer free from GiveAwayoftheDay. I liked it so well that after my hard drive crashed I bought the Fileminimizer. I have not been disappointed. It works the most magic with graphics-rich files. As a teacher who makes frequent use of PowerPoint presentations, this is a must have.

Responses 1, 17, 25 and 41 radiate candor and are very much appreciated... number 3 sounds like a plant... the commentary is so gushing and saccharinely sweet it's scary...

If like me you don't like starting one of these installs until you've got the registration numbers/data, from the GOTD readme.txt file visit http://goo.gl/qQDDv while downloading.

#39 - I had exactly the same problem.
What do we do?

FWIW I think FILEminimizer Office &/or Balesio's free FILEminimizer Pictures, or any of their compression products may be handier if you're on the receiving end -- while the document/image author may have wanted to impress you with high rez images, you may be more concerned about storage &/or network traffic/bandwidth demands... after all that gorgeous pic of the company headquarters adds nothing to the core information, proposal etc. it contains.

Yes it's good etiquette to consider the size of anything you send via e-mail, it's cool to keep downloads as small as possible, & yes most people like smaller files even when it compromises quality [otherwise you'd be downloading .wav files instead of mp3s], but at the receiving end that sort of thing's just not something you can always control.

OTOH at home you may not have that many incoming docs, & a great many popular apps reduce image size automatically before attaching them to the e-mails you receive. And with the stuff you create, If image file size is important to you there's a good chance you already optimize both quality & size before you use/store those images. [if you don't worry about file size that's fine too -- like whatever OS you run it's frankly none of my business ;-) ].

My guess is that some people would find it easier using one of the FILEminimizer apps than working with the individual images, &/or easier than teaching someone else [e.g. a family member] to keep file sizes down.

I've received my registration details, but when I try to register the product online I get the message "Your licence information could not be found on the Activation server" If this error persists please contact....... bla bla bla yet the product appeared to rtegister.

I mention this becasue some recent giveaways have reverted to demo after a few months (see forums for details)

AS stated in several other posts, this software is good for sending a quick email for review to a client, etc but is not good for archiving print quality files.

The compression rates aren't really bad and get better with each step down in MS Office versions (single 15 MB PPT file reduced by 34.6% in Office 2007, 14.6 MB PPT by 58.2% in Office XP, and 15.01 MB PPT by 87.9% in Office 2000), however the lack of support for Office 2010 makes this software a bit dated for my use.

Perhaps if they update the rendering engine to prevent so much quality loss in images and make it work with "All" versions of Office it would be worth purchasing. Until that happens though I will stick with WinRAR for my compression needs.

I am having the exeact same problem acctivating as #39 I am running win 7 64bit, I even tried the second choice to manualy activate although you will not recieve your acctivation for three days, no good for GOTD rules?? please advice
JB

Interesting. If you have Regmon (Sysinternals) running this app closes it when you start it. Apparently it doesn't want you to see what it's doing to your registry.

I'd like to be able to decide for myself what I run on my computer.

Some versions of Powerpoint (and Word) already have the capability to compress pictures to reduce file size. It was not easy to find, as I recall (I don't use it any more since I use Linux). I think you clicked on ANY picture and selected "reduce file size" or some thing. Open/LibreOffice has a Presentation Minimizer extension that does the same thing. Getting to know how to use the extension manager is very useful.

I have a problem with the activation. It accepts the registration details, and after that a window pops- up for activation. There are 3 options- online, manual and activate later. When I try to activate online, it shows:

“Your license information could not be found on the Activation Server.
If this error persist, please contact us at activation@balesio.com and provide all of your order information.”

Here is the screenshot:
http://i55.tinypic.com/nyzr54.jpg

Does anybody have a similar issues?

Reiteration. As @29 stated 2007-2010 have better compression than earlier versions. 2003 does not and from test driving this program, it still does fairly decent with later versions as well. I got 93% compression and couldn't really tell a difference in the test ppt I created.

Hi, to me QUALITY of "end product" after compressing (size reduction) - mainly photos and images, means so much that I tend to send One large(r) photo/image file and apologize to Folks for it's size, or send smaller pictures and mention that original size (if for printing) is avaible..I spend so much time restoring old, damaged, "bad" photos (sometimes they have to be enlarged, pain:) - that "Anything" - (with it's best intentions) to reduce the size, but compromising the Quality would reverse my Work and in my "hoggy heart" would be criminal:) -- If todays Offer, and Thanks GAOTD for it - would surpass my expectations I would be First to blow the Trumpets!
Any well tested "working magic" Alternatives?

to all those users that think this product is to save space on you hard drive, THIS IS NOT FOR THAT PURPOSE, the target users are who need to send office files by email, publish them on the web, extranets, etc.

please read the stuff RTFM before post your comments

This software is useful for sending a smaller, lower-quality file for the purpose of screen reading. Or indeed to let people print but only a lower quality edition. It allows you to do that very quickly and easily.

However, it is NOT to be used for archiving print-quality documents. It will reduce the visual quality when printing.

For: Emailing to people wanting on-line read. GREAT for "draft" documents
Against: Print quality. Not for archiving your "final editions"

I think some people are missing the idea behind this software. When you build a powerpoint presentation and add images to it lets say a 3.2mb image which i know is huge but for illustration sake you just took a family photo with your 5mpx camera and add the huge photo to powerpoint. Of course it's too big to fit on the canvas so you have to resize it and make it all pretty so you can add text and what not to show everyone on christmas. Well when you resize the image, visually it get's smaller but the 3.2mb size of the image doesn't. Start adding in more photo's and pretty soon you have a huge PPT. My understanding is that this removes all that "extra" size and compresses it down to the actual size of your PPT image so when you send the ppt to aunt ruth in deleuth by email as a christmas card she doesn't recieve a 15mb powerpoint.

NX PowerLite is more better than it ...
It include powerpoint, word, excell, jpg, and pdf ...

I purchased PPTMinimizer (a precursor, apparently, to this offering) and use it ONLY when a recipient has file size limitations on their email, and I warn the recipient that the file has been heavily compressed and they need to limit their review to content and not appearance. I've had very good experience with the compression, but not so much with the resulting appearance of the images.

I would recommend using this product, but only for the review process. Maintain your original file for final production.

At step 3 of the online registration it told me that it could not complete. However, the "About" shows my license and email. Should I be worried?

@25
Thanks Svend! I just installed and deinstalled on XP SP3 32bit and Win7 Ult 32bit (sandboxed) with no unusual issues using Revo uninstaller (as always).

As for some posts concerning the sense it makes, sure HDD space is cheap, however it is of use (to me) as mentioned in #9.

Thanks all... tom

FWIW, I've used this in the past with Excel 2003 & it did great but later versions of Excel seem to have quite a bit more compression built in already and the results weren't impressive. That's my impression, anyway. Haven't tried it with Word or PP.

The reason I used it in the first place was because I have some *huge* files and constantly compressing and uncompressing them was getting irritating. With this, I could just leave them in the original .xls format. It worked well and really *did* (regularly) reduce their size by about 90%. With the xml formats that XL is using now, it pretty much does that on its own without the need for something like this.

Bottom-line (from my experience): IF you have ginormous files and IF you regularly open and close them and want/need to keep them small (for whatever reason) and IF you have an older (2003 or before) version of Excel THEN this will help you a great deal.

It does what it says on the box, so to speak. I have just installed it on XP sp3 without problems. I then tried it on a single page Word document containing one small image which I had received by email and which at 2.48MB looked bloated. File minimiser instantly reduced it in size by 85% to 0.37MB with no noticeable reduction in quality. I thought then by comparison I would apply the "compress" command to the original file's image directly in Word 2003 using the lowest quality option and then saved the file. The picture was perhaps very slightly less sharp, but the file size had gone down to 34KB (a 98.8% reduction)!! Conclusion: the inbuilt compression facilities in Office can achieve similar or better results more flexibly. The programme doesn't work with non-Office files, such as PDF. File sizes may be less important these days, but why email 2.84MB when 34KB is equally fit for purpose?

Well, in the case study concerning the German army forces, they say that this army had about 320,000 people. This was true in the year 1998. Since then, the forces have been reduced to below 200,000.

From their website, they present a very impressive list of customers with big companies like CocaCola, Siemens, Volvo ...
If you look for details namely case studies, you find them here:
http://balesio.com/corporate/eng/testimonials.php?pid=casestudies
But where are the big companies gone?
well you will still find some big customers there like the German federal army forces, but as I somehow expected, these case studies are not dated. Maybe these are customers from the last millenium, when memory space was expensive. No need for them to use the product today?
Well, in the case study concerning the German army forces, they say that this army had about 320,000 people. This was true in the year 1998. Since then, the forces have been reduced to below 200,000.

So this case study is 13 years old. 13 years ago a typical hard disk had a capacity ranging from 2 GB to 4 GB which is a thousand times less than the capacity of nowadays hard disks.

@ Tom, when I uninstalled I got a lot of error messages from Office programs. Then tried to start the various Office programs, but was told that there was not enough memory on the HD, assigned to I have close to 1 TB. No warning of reboot after uninstallation. Another reader informed me that it fixed itself after reboot, so I did and it worked again. What I worry about is what happens if you do not restart and have time to install more programs and possibly restore to a restore point before rebooting. Maybe I'm too cautious, but I always get the creeps when I get a lot of error messages when uninstalling!

http://balesio.com/fileminimizer/eng/features.php

Compresses StarOffice and OpenOffice files provided they are saved in a Microsoft format.

Got be for work's good

@18. Ok, it all worked out for me as well by rebooting, but the question is, why no mention of this when uninstalling!

@12
Svend, can you please explain your claim; I am very interested why and on which account it "ruin" my Office installation...

If it is true, then I would expect the developer to comment here...

Or this just an knee-jerk comment?

Thanks in advance! Tom

I USED FILE FILEminimizer Pictures. IT'S NICE. NOW, I CAN USE FILEminimizer Office FREE. THANK GOTD.

I agree w/ the earlier responses to HDD's now being large enough that compression isn't really necessary anymore. I have a 500GB HDD in my laptop and a 1TB external HDD, and after making digital copies of my entire DVD library and constantly downloading videos off of YouTube, music, and other software from GOTD, I've still got plenty of space left over. Every year, newer, bigger, faster, and cheaper HDD's are coming onto the market. The only people that I would see having the need for compression software of any kind would be those still clinging to older, smaller capacity HDD's.