Lesson 7.5: Create .ZIP Files

Why create a ZIP file.  Besides making a single file smaller so that is will take less storage space and will download faster, a ZIP file can also serve as an archive file.  Let's say that there is a collection of files that you want to make available is a single download.  You can use a compression utility.


7-Zip is a free compression utility that can archive collection of files into a single ZIP file:

1. Place the desired files for the collection into a folder.
2. Right-click the folder and choose 7-Zip.  You can choose several different methods to create a ZIP archive.
   
   
   
   
   
• Add to archive ... - will provide you the choice of the type of archive file to create and where to save it.
• Add to "<foldername>.zip" - will save the .zip file at the same location as the folder or file being compressed.
  
  
Your folder will be combined into a compressed .ZIP archive file.

3. You can also use 7-Zip to extract a ZIP archive file.  Right-click the ZIP file and choose the desired options to open or extract the contents.