When you have a large file and you want to attach it in an e-mail, you can condense it making it smaller and faster to send. In the same way, you will receive such condensed files and they will have the three letters "zip" after the dot. You will not be able to install the file or view the view until you use a zip/unzip utility program to extract or uncondense the file back to its original format.

You use this zip/unzip utility program when you download files from the Internet as well. If you have a dial up modem, you do not want to lose your connection in the middle of downloading a large file or program. With downloading a "zip" file, it takes less time and you will probably not lose your connection before the download is complete. We will talk more about downloading files shortly.

Once you have a zip/unzip utility program installed on your system, you can just click on any file that has a "zip" extension and the zip/unzip utility program will extract the file back to its original format. Remember to write down where the zip/unzip utility program places the original formatted files.

There are several free zip/unzip utility programs available to download from the Internet, with the most popular one being a program called WINZIP. I have also used one called ENZIP. Below are the Internet addresses for these zip/unzip utility programs. Again there are many zip/unzip utility programs - these are just a few of them.

• http://www.winzip.com/downse.htm

• http://www.cpam.freeserve.co.uk/

• http://www.zipitfast.com/

Resources

See ResourceRecommendations. Feel free to add additional resources to these lists, but please follow the guidelines on ResourceRecommendations including ResourceRecommendations#Guidelines_for_Rating_Resources.

Contributors

• () ValHaring - 23 Sep 2002
• <If you edit this page: add your name here; move this to the next line; and include your comment marker (initials), if you have created one, in parenthesis before your WikiName.>

Page Ratings