Bundle up and Zip
By Charles Miller

This week an Atención reader reminds me that some things I take for granted are things that other people want to have explained. The question is: “What is a ZIP file?”

“Zip” is a type of file compression. A zip file is a single file, which contains one or more files compacted together into one file to eliminate wasted space. This was designed to make files cheaper and quicker to download and take up less hard disk storage space. With high-speed Internet and inexpensive, larger hard disks, those reasons have all but gone away.

Today, zip files are used mostly to keep groups of files together so that all the related files are packed inside one file. This is one of those features of Microsoft Windows that has escaped many users’ attention because it lacks a visible Application Program Interface (API) meaning there is no icon or menu item anywhere that starts the zip program.

An example of how using a zip file could be useful is for sending a group of related files to someone via email. Let us imagine that you had collected a dozen image files, a video file, and some Microsoft Word documents into one folder and wanted to send the whole lot to someone via email.

Open up the folder containing those diverse file types. Click on Edit / Select All. Now move your mouse and hover over one of the files. Right-click on that file, then click on Send To / Compressed (zipped) Folder.

Scroll down to the bottom of the list of files and you will discover a new file has been created. This file will have a yellow file folder icon with a zipper running top to bottom. The name of that file will be the same as the one on which you right-clicked earlier. If you want, this would be a good time to right-click on that file then click on “Rename” to change the name to something such as “Atención Articles.zip”. Remember to not erase the “.zip” if it appears at the end of the name.

If you wish to secure the files, double-click on the zip file, then click on File / Add a Password to create one.

Now you may email that “Atención Articles.zip” file to your friends. When they receive it via email, they may double-click on that file to open it. When they do so using Windows, they will see a list of the files and, on the left sidebar, an option to “Extract all files” (or click on File / Extract All). Windows will create a new folder named “Atención Articles” and will “unarchive” all the files you had earlier included when you created the zip archive on your computer. On the recipient’s computer, all those files you sent will be together in the same folder as on yours.

The procedure described above works equally well using Mac OS X. Control-click on the file and click on “Create Archive,” or click on a file then to the “Action” menu to click on “Create Archive” from there. If you are using a Mac and are on the receiving end, just double-click the zip file and Tiger will automatically “unarchive” it even if the zip file was created on a computer using Windows; but remember that while the zip file format is compatible between Mac and Windows, the files contained within the zip might not be.

Zip compression works best on files such as word processing documents, but it does not save much space on already compressed formats such as JPEG images. The advantage of zip compression is the convenience of bundling multiple files to keep them in one single package.


Charles Miller is a freelance computer consultant, a frequent visitor to San Miguel since 1981 and now practically a full-time resident. He may be contacted at 044-415-101-8528 or email FAQ8 (at) SMAguru.co