How do I compress files for email?

Select all the files you want to send, CTRL- or RIGHT-click and select the Compress option from the contextual menu.

Note that Word and PDF files are already binary data and very likely will not be compressed much if at all. Zipping them is only a convenience for sending multiple files within a single compressed archive.

You can archive them, which may be convenient. You may get some compression with Word document files, but you probably won't with PDFs. Word now uses a form of binary file to store its documents and they may not compress much. But give it a try. Some files do compress while others may not.