Taking the mystery out of using Zip Files

What is a zip file?

Think of a zip file like a briefcase you can stuff all of your work into for the drive home. Zip files behave almost like a folder on your computer with the exception that all the files inside a zip file are compressed to their smallest possible size to make the zip file smaller and more portable. This makes creating zip files useful if you want to email larger files like photos (and have a 10MB email limit) or if you want to free up disk space on your computer.  Zip files are also a great way of bundling up a group of files before you send them onto a friend as you only need to send a single zip file rather than a collection of smaller files. This can be useful of you use a webmail site like Hotmail or Yahoo where it can take ages to upload each individual file you want to attach to your email. With a zip files, you only need to upload a single attachment?

Once you start using zip files, you will learn that some files can be compressed further than others. For example, many pictures (like JPGs) are already highly compressed, so the space savings will be minimal. Other file types have much more ‘padding’ in them and so they can be compressed a lot further. A good way of thinking about it is to imagine the way you can squish a sleeping bag into such a small space but would have issues trying to squash a brick.

Zipping

To create a zip file using Windows XP or Vista, simply right click on the file or folder you want to compress, mouse over Send To and left click Compressed (zipped) Folder from the list that appears.

This will create a zip file which has the same name and contents as the original file or folder you right clicked but with a “.zip” extension on the end of it and a funny little zipped folder icon. This is the file you should send on if you’ve compressed to email someone.

Unzipping

To unzip a zip file, simply double click it select and drag its contents to a folder of your choice. Alternatively, double click on the file and click on the Extract all files button that appears on the left hand side. Follow the prompts provided by the wizard to extract the files and folders in the zip file to a location of your choice.