First off, can you get your hands on a newer version of word? Office 97 is 3 versions old. Oh just saw that your system is 98. If you can get your hands on it I think that 2000 can work on it.

The only way to decrease the files size is to decrease the dimensions of the picture. Word can't display the full size of the pic if it is a big one however it doesn't actually decrease the dimensions of the pic, it just changes the size of it that is displayed. Does that make sense? I don't know what to tell you to use. MS Paint doesn't do that & I don't know what will work on 98. Search for something on google. Also if the file isn't a .jpg/.jpeg file (they are the same) but something else like a .bmp or .tiff you can use paint to change it to a jpeg file. Open the pic up in paint, choose "save as" under the file menu, then click on the pull down menu besides save as file type & choose JPEG. The files size of the picture is smaller because it is compressed but the dimensions aren't smaller so the word file size could still be pretty large, but it should help some. That will work for any files you create in the future but you will have to have the original picture file to change any existing files. Resize each pic & recopy it into your word files. Hope this helps.

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