#Mac utilities for expanding zip files how to#
#Mac utilities for expanding zip files zip file#
#Mac utilities for expanding zip files mac#

A real estate agent scans and ZIPs a sales contract and sends it to a mortgage broker for a home loan when buying a home.

A car insurance agent ZIPs and emails information related to a person's health insurance, homeowner's insurance, auto insurance, or life insurance policy.

Here are some specified real-world examples of actual usage of ZIP files: ZIP files are common across a variety of business areas, including industries ranging from medical, insurance, legal, mortgage, banking and financial, scientific, equities and trading, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and education industries.

#Mac utilities for expanding zip files zip file#

This makes the ZIP file format convenient for sharing and distributing groups of files. When this is done, the path and folder information of the file tree is preserved inside the ZIP file. In addition to compression, ZIP files are archives that can group together multiple files and folders. In the cloud, ZIP files are commonly found as both Gmail attachments, as well as files stored in Google Drive or other cloud-based storage systems such as Dropbox and Microsoft OneDrive.

Today, the ZIP file format remains in heavy use in the internet and in the cloud, with billions of such files in circulation. Once received, the ZIP file would then be opened and its contents decompressed ('unzipped') onto a user's computer.

It also allowed for multiple files and folders to be grouped together ('zipped') and transferred as a single ZIP file. Using ZIP compression regularly saved minutes or even hours off of file transfers. In this era, file transfers occurred using MODEMs and transfer speeds were very limited. The ZIP file format dates to the late 1980s when it received heavy use in pre-internet-era Bulletin Board Systems, or BBSes. The ZIP file format is very popular for efficiently storing and transferring groups of files in a variety of business and personal applications.

#Mac utilities for expanding zip files mac#

To do this, open Spotlight on your Mac (Command+Space), and search for “Archive Utility.ZIP files are compressed archives that group together one or more files into a single file, compressing the files (making them smaller) that are contained inside.

#Mac utilities for expanding zip files how to#

How to Change Archive Utility SettingsĮven though Archive Utility has no visible UI, you can change some of its settings. If it was a single file, you’ll see that the file will return to its original state, with the name intact. If you are decompressing a folder or a Zip file that contained multiple files, it will show up as a folder with the same name as the archive. After several seconds, the file or the folder will decompress in the same folder. Navigate to the archive in the Finder app and double-click the Zip file. It doesn’t matter if it’s a Zip file that you downloaded on the internet or something that you compressed yourself. You can now move the compressed Zip file to another folder or send it along as an email attachment. RELATED: The Fastest Ways to Rename Files on macOS If you compressed multiple files, you’ll see a new file with the name “Archive.zip.” You should rename the file to make it easier to find. If you compressed a single file or folder, the archive will carry the same name, with a “.zip” extension.

Once the compression process is finished, you’ll see a new compressed file in the same folder.