What does ZIP do with your files?

It puts the same information in a smaller space
Here is the line above again. à It puts the same information in a smaller space

The purpose of zipping a file is that it takes less space. This way, a file can fit on a floppy, or will take significant less time to download fro the Internet. However, you cannot read it or run a program in that format.

Once you copy the zip file to it's destination file, you need to UNZIP it.

Unzip puts the information back into its original size and shape. à After the unzip procedure this line reads like this:
Unzip puts the information back into its original size and shape.

This procedure is great when

	You can't fit a file on a floppy.
	You want to send a large file by e-mail over a modem
	You want to archive lots of your old files, but don’t want to delete them.

Zip and unzip are two special programs . If you do not have them on your computer, you cannot zip or unzip files. WINZIP is a great program that you can download and use temporarily from www.winzip.com . It is worth buying after your trial period.

To zip a file, with Winzip installed on your computer,
Highlight the files, right click and click Add to Zip.
In the example below, the program will then make a zip file called bangbang.zip

To unzip a file, simply right click on it and choose, UNZIP.

Advanced users:

If you send a zipped file to a novice user, they might have no clue what to do with it! Or they might not have the UNZIP software and are certainly not ready to download such a program from the Internet.

In this case, make your zip file a self-extracting file. It is a zipped file, but it does not end with the familiar *.zip, but with *.exe. If the end-user double clicks on this file, it unzips the zipped files by itself in a certain folder.

The self-extracting file option can be found in the latest WINZIP releases under : Actions, Make .EXE File, or by right clicking the mouse on an existing zip file, as in the example above.