A 1MB ceiling is a common "keep it light" rule on general web forms, LMS and Canvas assignment upload boxes, and contact-form attachments. At this size, several pages with a handful of images typically compress comfortably at the Recommended preset.
Compress a PDF nowA one-megabyte budget is generous enough that most everyday documents — assignments, forms, short reports with a few illustrative images — fit without much trouble, since it is roughly 3-10x larger than the strict caps used by government or visa portals. The exception is anything image-heavy across many pages, like a scanned packet of several documents or a slide deck exported to PDF with lots of screenshots, which can still exceed 1MB even after compression.
A text-heavy assignment or form is usually already close to 1MB before you even compress it; an image-heavy scan or export needs more attention.
Add your file in the browser — no sign-up or file upload to a server is needed for the compression to run.
For most everyday documents at this size target, Recommended quality reduces the file well below 1MB while keeping images clear.
Once the download is under 1MB, attach it to your Canvas or LMS assignment box, web form, or contact-form field as usual.
It is much looser than the 100-300KB caps used by some government and visa portals, so most standard documents — reports, assignments, short PDFs with a few images — clear it easily at the Recommended preset.
Some learning-management systems check the file type or page count in addition to size, so if compression alone does not resolve the upload error, check the assignment instructions for any other file requirements.
Usually not — Extreme is meant for much stricter caps. For a 1MB target, Recommended quality is normally enough and keeps images looking sharper than Extreme would.