Hmmmm.
I had me an original 728 kb rtf file, replaced all 4,000+ straight quotes with smart quotes, the file became 928, saved as an rft. Did it again, same (now 928k rtf file), repalced the same 4000+ quotes, saved it to a now-1018kb file. One more time: 1248 kb.
Took the 1248 kb rtf file, save it as html-filtered, it went back to 928 kb, then saved it again as an rtf to 978 kb.
Might need to find a word-junk-stripper-file, let's see, where did I put that?
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/834427
AND:
IT DOES NOT SOLVE THE PROBLEM.........
................rrrrrrr..........................
.............wait wait wait wait..........
................................
........
Doy. Do what makes you happy in Word, because it is better at editing things and macros and styles, etc.
Then open it and save it in WordPad: My file is now 597kb.
-bjc