Microsoft Word will sometimes compress your images and this can have a severe effect on your graphics, particularly if they contain text.

You can prevent this quality loss in Word’s options. You can prevent the quality loss in both the current document and all NEW documents.

Word for Windows

Go to Word’s File menu and choose Options

1. Go to the Advanced Tab
2. Scroll down to Image Size and Quality
3. Put a check mark in Do not compress images
4. Select whether you wish this to apply to the current document or all new documents.

Word On Mac

The process is similar on the Mac. Go to the Word menu (at the top of screen) and choose Preferences.

1. Click on the Edit options
2. Put a check mark in Do not compress images in file
3. Choose whether you want the setting to apply to the current file or all new files.

Our Recommendation

Teachers tend to produce graphics where high accuracy is required and we recommend that you set Word to Do Not Compress for all new documents – as well as updating the setting for old files you are working on. While image compression has few issues when used on photographs, it can make your output look much worse than it should.