With the OLE bound control you also need to watch out for the page size / layout being reset by VFP5+ to 'Custom' and approximately the size of the displayed OLEBound control (e.g. 4 inches) - this might be fixed in VFP 6...anybody?

Another choice is to store the files in memo(binary) fields and load / save them when needed: this is useful if there is no common path to the files available to all users, plus users are only ever working on a local copy and can never get their hands directly on the files outwith the database. This doesn't cure the bloat but does reduce it (OLE bound objects store the presentation data for a file, even if linked, memo fields don't). You can load and save with APPEND MEMO and COPY MEMO.