Archiving . Compression. Stuff like that. Written by Dan Gookin Published by Quantum Particle Bottling Co., Coeur d’Alene, ID, 83814 USA

Copyright ©2008 by Quantum Particle Bottling Co., Inc. All Rights Reserved. This work cannot be reproduced or distributed without written permission of the copyright holder.

Various copyrights and trademarks may or may not appear in this text. It is assumed that the trademark or copyright is owned by whoever owns it, and the use of that material here is in no way considered an infringement or abuse of the copyright or trademark. Further, there is. Oh, wait. Never mind. I’m just making all this up anyway. I’m not a lawyer. I hate lawyers.

For additional information on this or other publications from Quantum Particle Bottling Co., please visit http://www. wambooli.com/

Second Edition December, 2008 Table of Contents Archiving...... 2 What the Heck is Archiving?...... 4 Historical Nonsense About Compressed Folders and ZIP Files...... 5 The Bad Old Modem Days...... 6 Packing Multiple Files Into a Single Library...... 6 Better than Library Files, Compressed Archives...... 7 Enter the ARC file format...... 8 From ARC to PAK to ZIP...... 9 Enter the Compressed Folder...... 9 ZIP or Zip: What’s the difference?...... 10 The ZIP Tutorials...... 11 Creating a ZIP File Archive...... 11 Viewing the Archive...... 14 Adding Files to the ZIP Archive...... 15 Managing Files in the Archive...... 19 Extracting Files from the Archive...... 22 After you’re done with the archive, then what?...... 26 Tutorial Cleanup...... 26 Drawbacks to ZIP Archives...... 27 Advanced ZIP Archive Stuff...... 28 Creating a ZIP Archive the Awkward Way...... 28 Installing a Program from a ZIP Archive...... 29 The Compressed Folder as EXE File Syndrome...... 30 Folders in ZIP Archives...... 30 Password Protection...... 30 E-mailing a ZIP Archive...... 33 A Few Words About WinZIP...... 34 Blue Compression Archiving...... 34 Blue History...... 34 Activating a file’s Blue Compression attribute...... 37 It Didn’t Work!...... 38 Decompressing Blue Compression...... 41 When you shouldn’t use Blue Compression...... 41 It seems like ZIP archives are a bother with Blue Compression around...... 41 ZIP Archives Versus Blue Compression:Pros and Cons...... 42 What the Heck is Archiving? Archiving is a fancy term for storing stuff in your computer. But it’s more than just using the FileSave As to save a file, or even the Move and Copy commands to shuffle files around. No, archiving is about long term storage. It's about how to keep stuff you need, but may not need that often. Stuff that's too important to throw away — pictures, older documents, correspondence, and stuff like that. Archiving involves these things:  Using the basic file commands to save and store your stuff, either on a secondary hard drive or a recordable CD.  Storing things in a Compressed Folder or ZIP file.  Using Blue Compression in Windows. I've written about the first method for years in my books. There's no point in repeating that information here. So this document is specifically about using Compressed Folders and Blue Compression. Historical Nonsense About Compressed Folders and ZIP Files Computer users have been archiving files for years, since the earliest days of primitive steam-powered computers, through the vacuum tube era, and into the transistor age.

Cindy attempts to change archives without damaging her fingernails. Archiving is basically the art of keeping files around without deleting them. In the old days, that could be done by simply disconnecting a disk or tape and putting it into a vault. Today there are much more sophisticated ways of archiving, such as using the ZIP compressed file format. The following sections explain how the ZIP file format came about, why it was necessary, and stuff like that. If you’d rather just start with the tutorials, turn to page 5. The Bad Old Modem Days Another reason to archive is simply to keep files together, primarily for sending over a modem.

Popular in movies, acoustic coupler modems such as this cheesy Tandy model from the early 1980s, were a royal pain in the butt to use. For example, go back to the bad old modem days, back before Windows. Back then, files were small say 16K in size on average. But yet the modems were slow. Sending a single file took a long time. That was still okay because most programs were simply one file. As things got more complex, programs would have more parts. Sometimes a single program would consist of five files. You would want to keep them all together when sending them from one computer to another. Rather than resort to unusual names or other weird techniques — stuff that few folks would understand let alone learn — the library file was developed.

Packing Multiple Files Into a Single Library A Library File was simply a collection of multiple files. So if you wanted to send five files by modem:

ALPHA BETA GAMMA DELTA EPSILON You could stuff them all into a single Library File named ALPHA.LIB. The Library program would create the file. You could then send the single file over the modem instead of the five files. If all went well, nothing was lost. The Library file illustration.

On the other end, your pal receives the ALPHA.LIB file. He also has a copy of the Library utility, so he runs that program. In a few moments, the files stored in the ALPHA.LIB Library file are removed, orextracted , from the archive and you’re buddy has the five files he wanted:

ALPHA BETA GAMMA DELTA EPSILON Library could be another word for “archive.” Indeed, this document could be called “Making Library files” instead of “Archiving.” But historically Library files were doomed. That’s because a better way to send files was developed: Thecompressed archive.

Better than Library Files, Compressed Archives Library files solved one problem: they kept several disparate files together. The problem was that the Library File itself wasn’t compact. In fact, there was no time saving over sending a Library file versus sending all the separate files stored in the Library. The solution was compression. File compression is possible because computer files are composed of binary information, the ones and zeros of song and legend.

0111 0011 0110 1111 0110 1110 1001 0111

In a typical file, a lot of those ones and zeros are repeated over and over. It may seem wasteful, but such a thing is forgivable in a computer because storage isn’t considered a big deal. But when storage space or file size does become a big deal, it’s possible compress that binary information into a small size — just like you compress household garbage in a trash compactor. 0111 0011 0110 1111 0110 1110 1001 0111

Unlike a trash compactor, however, it’s fully possible to de-compress data in a file without losing any of the information. A file that has been compressed and de- compressed is the same as a file that hasn’t been ever compressed. Compression and decompression is made possible thanks to advanced mathematics and encryption stuff that I don’t understand and you don’t care about.

The only drawback is that the computer cannot use a file in a compressed state: a text file cannot be read or a graphics file viewed when either is compressed. The file takes up less space, sure. But to use the file as intended, it must be decompressed.

Enter the ARC file format Just as the Library files were becoming popular for sending programs and files over the modem, the ARC or Archive file format came about. Modem users adopted it quickly. Like a Library, you could stuff and store multiple files into a single ARC file. But unlike a Library, the ARC file used compression. The end result was that the ARC file was smaller than all the original files. Sometimes the ARC file was just really teensy —which was amazing.

ARC combines the convenience of a Library file with compression. Modem users loved the ARC file format because it meant that multiple files could be sent between computers quickly. And anything that saved online time back then was considered a blessing. (It took 15 minutes to send a 15K file on a 300 bps modem!)

From ARC to PAK to ZIP The company that made ARC was called System Enhancement Associates, SEA for short. When they developed ARC, they included the programming , which was common with mainframe programs of the day. The problem was that the code was not being given away; it was still copyrighted material. Along comes a fellow named Phil Katz. Phil took that programming code for ARC and improved upon it. He developed his own, better version of the program, which he called PKARC. PK for Phil Katz. As these things go in the computer industry. SEA sued Phil Katz. Phil countered by renaming PKARC to PKPAK. That only fooled SEA’s lawyers for a week or two. Despite the legal wrangling, Phil’s program was faster than SEA’s and it quickly gained popularity among modem users. So although he stole the code, Phil became something of a hero in the online community. Eventually Phil came up with an entirely new and better file compression and archive format he called ZIP. Unlike other archiving utilities at the time, ZIP used several different compression algorithms depending on the nature of the file being compressed. Further, the ZIP file format was open source, meaning that other programmers could develop ZIP file utilities. That quickly led to ZIP being the most popular file compression format, even to this day.

Enter the Compressed Folder PC users were always able to use the ZIP file compression, first with the DOS- based PKZIP utilities and later with versions of that utility that ran under Windows, including the popular WinZIP program.

The Compressed Folder icon for Windows Vista (left) and Windows XP (right). With the release of Windows ME, adopted the ZIP file format for use directly in Windows. As they often do, however, Microsoft did not use the commonly accepted ZIP name. Instead, Microsoft called the ZIP files Compressed folders. Go figure. A Compressed Folder in Windows is exactly the same thing as a ZIP file.

Despite the similarities, there are things that you can do with ZIP files beyond what Microsoft offers in Windows. If you want to take advantage of those things, then you need a ZIP file utility, such as WinZip available on the web atwww..com .

The WinZIP icon.

ZIP or Zip: What’s the difference? A ZIP file and a Zip disk are two different animals. The ZIP file is compressed file, an archiving containing one or more files all packed tightly into a single unit. Windows calls these files Compressed Folders. They also sport the ZIP filename extension. The Zip disk is a storage device developed by Iomega. It has nothing to do with ZIP files, other than they both share the same name.

A Zip disk. In this book, and elsewhere, ZIP files are referred to in all caps. The Zip disk, however, has an initial capital Z. Seeing how Zip disks aren’t as popular as they once were, there shouldn’t be that much confusion. The ZIP Tutorials The best way to learn is by doing. The following sections build upon each other, teaching you how to use and manage ZIP file archives on your computer. Note that completing one lesson provides you with the tools necessary to use the other lessons. Therefore I highly recommend that you read these sections in order. Upon completion of these tutorials you can use these sections as a reference.

Creating a ZIP File Archive Seeing a ZIP file archive in action is the best way to demonstrate how file compression works. If you’re read through the first part, about the history of the ZIP file, then you understand things a bit. But a practical hands-on demonstration will really drive the point home. The following sections describe how to archive some rather large text files. You can use text files on your own computer or you can get them from my web site. The next section describes how things are done.

Copy the files to your computer Normally the files you want to store and compress into a ZIP archive are already on your computer. You can really use any files on your hard drive for compressing, especially text files or BMP graphics images. To keep this tutorial consistent, I recommend that you borrow some sample files from my web page. That way the results you get for the following tutorials will be similar (if not the same) to what you read here. So obey these next few steps to grab the sample files from my web page and save them to your own computer:

1. Open your Internet web browser program. For most folks, that will be the Internet Explorer program, though any web browser works fine.

2. Visit address http://www.wambooli.com/freebies/archiving/ Type that address into your web browser to visit that web page. You’ll see a list of three files on that page:

THERAVEN.TXT TOMSAWYER.TXT WARWORLDS.TXT Each filename item is a link to a text file, stuff I borrowed from Project Gutenberg elsewhere on the Internet. You can use these sample files to test your ZIP file compression prowess. The next thing to do is download the files from the Internet and into your computer. Continue working the steps:

3. Right-click on a link to download a file. If you’re just starting, right-click on the link THERAVEN.TXT. A shortcut menu appears.

4. Choose Save Target As from the menu. The Save As dialog box appears. 5. Confirm that the proper folder appears in the Save in drop-down list, at the top of the dialog box. You want to choose the Documents folder in Windows Vista or the My Documents folder in Windows XP. If either folder doesn’t appear, then choose it from the Address bar.

6. Click the Save button. And the text file is transferred to your computer, saved on your hard drive in the Documents or My Documents folder.

7. After the download is complete, click the Close button. 8. Download the other file(s), if you don’t yet have all three. Repeat steps 3 through 8 as necessary until you have all three files on your computer in the Documents or My Documents folder.

9. Close the web browser (Internet Explorer) when you’re done. You should now have the three files on your computer, ready for running through some archiving examples. Continue reading in the next section.

Looking at the sample files The files downloaded from the preceding section now dwell on your computer. Time to look at them.

1. Open the Documents or My Documents folder. You can open that folder by opening its icon on the desktop, or by choosing Documents or My Documents from the Start button menu. The contents of the folder appear in a window on the screen.

2. Enlarge or re-size the my folder window. You’ll need the room to see everything displayed by the next step.

Double-click any windowís title bar to instantly maximize that window.

3a. In Windows Vista, choose Details from the Views toolbar button menu. 3b. In Windows XP, choose ViewDetails from the menu. In Details view, files are listed in several columns. Each column displays additional information about the file: name, size, type, date, and so on.

4. Click on the Name column heading. The files are sorted by their name: A to Z or Z to A depending on how many times you click the Name column heading.

5. Click on the Type column heading. Files are now sorted by their type. You’ll see folders listed first, then the other file types sorted alphabetically. Within each file type, files are sorted by their name. That’s because you first clicked the Name column heading in step 4. The My Documents window (Windows XP), sorted alphabetically by file type.

6. Scroll down through the list (if necessary) and locate the three sample text files. They should appear in alphabetical order, like this: THERAVEN.TXT TOMSAWYER.TXT WARWOLDS.TXT The files may not be in upper case, and you may not be able to see theTXT filename extension.

7. Check each file’s size. THERAVEN.TXT isn’t that big; it shows up as 34KB on my screen. But TOMSAWYER.TXT is 398KB and WARWORLDS.TXT is 351KB. Big files. By knowing the file’s size ahead of time you can dramatically see how file compression works. Keep reading in the next section.

Compressing a single file If you’ve been using Windows for any length of time, you’re probably aware that there are literally dozens of ways to do things, some easy but most awkward. To compress a single file, creating a ZIP file archive of that file, do the following:

1. Right-click the file to compress. For this example, right-click on the fileTOMSAWYER.TXT . 2. Choose Send ToCompressed (zipped) Folder Windows quickly compresses the file and stores it in a ZIP file. The ZIP file is given the same name as the original, though the file extension is nowZIP . 3. Set the name for the new ZIP file in the folder window. You may find that the file is selected for renaming. That’s handy, but not needed right now: Go ahead and press the Enter key to lock in the name TOMSAWYER.ZIP.

Don’t worry if you don’t see the ZIP file extension, but you will note that the file has the ZIP icon attached. 4. Look at the size of the zipped file. On my screen it shows up as 161KB, which is 237KB smaller than the original. That’s 40 percent of the original file size. Note that the original file is not changed by compression. In fact, you have two files in the My Documents folder, the original TOMSAWYER.TXT and the Compressed Folder TOMSAWYER.ZIP. The is the original file, untouched by the compression. The second is a compressed archive of the original, much smaller.

Congratulations!

You’ve just created a compressed folder, or zip file archive of a file. The file can now be attached to an email message and sent on the Internet, saving time, or it can be stowed elsewhere on the hard drive, saving disk space. In fact, the original file could be deleted to save all that disk space — but don’t delete anything now. Keep reading the next few tutorials so you get the complete picture of what ZIP archives are all about.

Viewing the Archive Although files stored in a ZIP archive are compressed you can still peer into the archive and see what it contains. That’s because the archive itself works like a folder (one reason that Windows calls them Compressed Folders). Just like a folder, which displays the list of files it contains, you can view the list of files stored inside a ZIP archive. Here’s how:

1. Double-click the Compressed Folder icon to open the archive and display its contents. For this example, open the TOMSAWYER.ZIP Compressed Folder created in the preceding section. You’ll see the contents, which look just like any other folder window. That view is deceptive, however; what you’ve looking at are compressed files, not a traditional Windows folder.

A peek into the belly of a ZIP file (Windows XP). Inside the archive you see the original file,TOMSAWYER.TXT . In Windows XP there isn’t much you can do with the file, but Windows Vista is smarter. Some file types, such as text files and graphics, can be opened from inside the Compressed Folder. The file(s) can also be copied or renamed. Do keep in mind, however, that you cannot run programs stored in a Compressed Folder.

2. Click the Back button on the toolbar. Clicking the Back button closes the Compressed Folder/ZIP archive file window and returns you back to the Documents or My Documents window. The contents of the archive have not been changed. Keep reading in the next section.

Adding Files to the ZIP Archive

Why not stuff the archive with the other two files you downloaded,THERAVEN.TXT and WARWORLDS.TXT? Like any other folder, a Compressed Folder can contain a number of files. In fact, the thing can be laden with files.

Adding a sing file to an archive Adding another file to the archive is cinchy:

1. Drag the icon for THERAVEN.TXT to the TOMSAWYER.ZIP archive’s icon. This is a single step, but it can be complex: Start by pointing the mouse at the icon for THERAVENT.TXT. Press and hold the mouse button to “grab” the icon by THERAVEN.TXT. Then keeping the mouse button down, move the mouse up to the icon for the TOMSAWYER.ZIP. Release the mouse button.

Dragging and dropping a file icon works just like dragging and dropping a card in Solitaire or FreeCell

Yes, the easiest way to add files to an archive is to drag and drop those files. You should notice a few things.

First, THERAVEN.TXT file is still around. You didn’t move or delete it. No, it was just added to the TOMSAWYER.ZIP archive. This worked like a file-copy operation.

Second, the overall size for the TOMSAWYER.ZIP archive has increased. On my screen it’s now 174KB, an addition of 13KB. Third, there is no feedback! No way to tell if the operation truly was a success. Because of this I’ll show you another way to copy a file to an archive. First, a confirmation:

2. Open the TOMSWAYER.ZIP archive. Inside the archive you’ll now find two files, the originalTOMSAWYER.TXT as well as the copy of THERAVEN.TXT. Both are compressed. Good. 3. Click the Start button to display the Start thing menu. Yes, you’re leaving the archive window open. 4. Choose the Documents or My Documents icon in the Start menu. A new folder window is opened. Now you should have two folder windows (at least) open on the desktop: the TOMSAWYER.ZIP archive window as well as the Document or My Documents window.

5. Arrange both windows so that you can see the contents of the TOMSAWYER.ZIP Compressed Folder window behind the Documents or My Documents window. The figure below shows how I’ve arranged the windows on my desktop in Windows Vista.

6. Locate the fileWARWORLDS.TXT in the Document or My Documents window. You may have to scroll around a bit to find it.

7. Drag the WARWORLDS.TXT document from the Documents or My Documents window to the TOMSAWYER.ZIP archive window. No fanfare, but you can instantly see that the file has been successfully added (copied) to the archive.

8. Close the TOMSAWYER.ZIP archive window. I’ll admit that dragging files between windows is clunky. Getting the windows opened and arranged on the screen can be a pain — especially when you have a small monitor or are using lower screen resolution. It’s just too much of a pain to set things up this way. On the upside, this drag-and-drop method between windows does provide better visual feedback. After the operation you saw the WARWORLDS.TXT file plunked down into the TOMSAWYER.ZIP archive. Instant feedback is good! Keep reading in the next section. Checking the archive’s size From the preceding section, only the Documents or My Documents window should be open on the screen. You may have to re-size it, manually moving the edges with the mouse, so that it better fits on the desktop.

Look at the archive’s size. On my screen, the TOMSAWYER.ZIP file shows up as 311KB in size. That’s far less than the combined size of the three separate text files,THERAVEN. TXT, TOMSAWYER.TXT, and WARWORLDS.TXT, which altogether weigh in at 781KB. That’s a savings of 470K. Golly!

Creating an archive of several files at once You don’t have to add files to an archive one at a time. You can create an archive and add all the files at once. Continuing from the preceding section:

1. Delete the TOMSAWYER.ZIP archive. Click on the file to select it. Press the Delete key on your keyboard, and answer Yes if asked if you want to send the file to the Recycle Bin.

2. Select all the files you want to archive. Select the three sample files in the My Documents folder:

THERAVEN.TXT TOMSAWYER.TXT WARWOLDS.TXT You can select them by dragging the mouse over all three, or you can select the first one, then use the Ctrl+Click technique to select the other two. (Refer to my book PCs For Dummies for more information on selecting icons.) Files can be gathered only from the current folder and placed into a ZIP file this way. For information on collecting files from around your hard drive, refer to the section, “The Collect and Compress ZIP Archive Method” later in this document.

3. Right-click on any selected file and choose Send ToCompressed (zipped) Folder Windows takes each file you selected and places it into a new ZIP archive. The archive is given the surname of one of the compressed files. On my screen it’s named THERAVEN.ZIP; it may be named something else on your computer, either TOMSAWYER.ZIP or WARWORLDS.ZIP. 4. If necessary, press the Enter key to lock in the new Compressed Folder’s name. 5. Open the compressed file archive you just created. 6. Confirm that the three files are inside. 7. Click the Back button in the folder window. Clicking the Back button returns you to the parent folder, Documents or My Documents. Continue reading in the next section.

Giving the archive a better name When you collect a swath of files and archive them the computer slaps a filename on the new ZIP file, using one of the names of the files you archived. Often this isn’t truly descriptive of the archive’s contents, or even what you want. Just like any other file on your computer, you can rename the archive. If Windows doesn’t afford you the opportunity to rename the Compressed Folder after it’s first created, then you can follow these steps to slap a new name on the thing:

1. Click once on the ZIP archive you created in the previous section. This selects the archive file. Ready for action!

Before moving on, check to see whether the .ZIP part of the filename is showing. You’ll have to remember this information for step 4.

2. Press the F2 key on the keyboard. F2 is the keyboard shortcut for the Rename command. You’ll notice that the file’s name is now selected and can be edited.

3. Type SAMPLE Don’t pres the Enter key yet!

Typing SAMPLE replaces the Compressed Folder’s current name with the name SAMPLE.

Renaming a file, step-by-step.

4. If the ZIP extension was visible in step 1, type .ZIP and press the Enter key. The file needs to keep itsZIP extension so that Windows remembers the file type as a ZIP archive/Compressed Folder. If you forget to keep the ZIP part of the name, Windows displays a warning error message. Remember that .ZIP! 5. Press the Enter key And the file is renamed!

The renamed file is selected, ready for action. You can rename any file on the computer, though I highly recommend that you change only the names of the files you created yourself. Don’t go wandering into the Windows folder, for example, and try to be clever with new names. For an archive, renaming is easy and often appropriate, especially when the archive may contain a variety of files and the name Windows slaps on the archive could be misleading. Managing Files in the Archive The following sections mull over various things you can do with ZIP archives, or Compressed Folders, in Windows.

Viewing a file in an archive It’s possible to preview some files held in a ZIP archive. This all depends on the program used to display the archive’s contents. With Windows and its Compressed Folders, you can easily preview text files held in an archive:

1. Open the Compressed Folder. For example, the SAMPLE.ZIP Compressed Folder from the preceding section.

2. Double-click to open the WARWORLDS.TXT document inside the archive. The document is opened and displayed on the screen in a Notepad window.

A text document stored inside a ZIP archive is previewed in Notepad. I’ve noticed in Windows Vista that Notepad may not display the file correctly. Oh well; that’s Windows Vista. The file can, however, be opened properly in WordPad or your computer’s word processor. Again, consider this booboo just a limitation of Windows and not any problem with the Compressed folder or anything that you’re doing wrong.

3. Close the Notepad window. 4. Click the Back button in the SAMPLE.ZIP archive window. Go back to the Documents or the My Documents folder. Note that previewing a text file inside a ZIP archive is not the same thing asextracting the file. In fact, the only time I regularly use this feature is when I’m viewing one of those README files in an archive. That way I can sometimes know what to expect from the archive’s contents. Deleting a file from an archive About the only true file management chore you can perform inside a ZIP archive is to remove files you no longer need in the archive. This works just like deleting a file in Windows, though once the file is removed from the archive it’s gone, gone, gone! There is no chance of recovery — well, unless you have an original, un-archived copied around. Do this:

1. Open the SAMPLE.ZIP archive in the My Documents folder. 2. Click to select the TOMSAWYER.TXT file within the archive. 3. Press the Delete key on your computer’s keyboard. You may be warned that removing the file is not undo-able.

4. If prompted about deleting the file, click the Yes button. And the file is gone from the archive. Though the file is gone from the archive, the original still exists. If it doesn’t, then do keep in mind that files can’t be un-deleted from a Compressed Folder. Deleting a file from within an archive isnot the same thing as extracting the file. In fact, when files are extracted from the archive they are not deleted; instead, an un- compressed copy of the file is blown out into a folder. That un-compressed copy is identical to the original, as you’ll discover when you continue reading in the next section.

Before starting the next section, replace the TOMSAWYER.TXT file back into theSAMPLE. ZIP archive. This document has already shown you a few ways to put a file into an archive, here is yet another way:

5. Click the Back button in the SAMPLE.ZIP archive window. You should now see the Documents or My Documents folder window.

6. Click on the TOMSAWYER.TXT file icon once to select it. 7. Press Ctrl+ on the keyboard, the Copy command. You could just as easily choose EditCopy.

8. Double-click to open the SAMPLE.ZIP archive file. 9. Press Ctrl+V on the keyboard, the Paste command. The TOMSAWYER.TXT file is pasted (copied) into the archive.

Copy and Paste is yet another way to copy files into a ZIP archive.

10. Click the Back button in the SAMPLE.ZIP window to return to the My Documents window. And you’re ready for the next section. The Copy and Paste operation works to copy any file in Windows from one folder to another, or from one disk drive to another. It also works to add one or more files to an existing archive. Adding a file that’s already in the archive Try this:

1. Drag the WARWORLDS.TXT file’s icon into theSAMPLE.ZIP archive. What you’re trying to do is add a file to the archive when a file that has that name is already in the archive.

The file warning in Windows Vista (left) and Windows XP (right).

2a. In Windows Vista, click the option Don’t Copy 2b. In Windows XP, click the No button. This cancels the operation; the archive is unchanged. Had you chosen the Copy And Replace option or clicked the Yes button, the file you added to the archive would replace the file already there. This is one way you can update or “freshen” an archive —but do be careful! If two files share the same name but have different content, then the one you replace in the archive will be obliterated and cannot be recovered.

What about two copies of a file in an archive? If, for some reason, you really want to have two copies of the same file in an archive, simply give them separate names before they’re put into the archive. For example:

SINISTER_A.TXT SINISTER_B.TXT Assume that both files contain the same information. So you start withSINISTER. TXT. Copy it into the Compressed Folder, then rename it to SINISTER_A.TXT. Then use the File>Copy command, followed by the Edit>Paste command to create a duplicate. Rename the duplicate to SINSISTER_B.TXT. Extracting Files from the Archive There is no use in compressing files unless you eventually plan on uncompressing them. In fact, the computer can do nothing with any compressed file; the file must be de-compressed and put back into a real folder (not a Compressed Folder) for other programs to see it, open it, save it, work on it — for you to do anything with the file. Think of compressed files like frozen food. For you to eat the food, it must be defrosted. Similarly, a compressed file must be de-compressed, or removed from the archive, for it to be of use again. Removing a file from an archive is known as extracting. I also refer to it as de- compressing. Phil Katz, in his original rendition of the ZIP archive format, called it exploding! But Windows uses “extracting” so that’s what I’ll go with here. The following tutorials assume that you’ve worked through the previous sections’ tutorials. The SAMPLE.ZIP file is the one you’ll be using, and that file is found in the Documents or My Documents folder, which has its window open on the screen if you’ve just come from the previous set of tutorials.

Extracting a single file The easiest way to get one file out of a ZIP archive is simply to copy it using the old Copy/Paste method. For example, suppose you just received the SAMPLE.ZIP archive and you want to put all those wonderful text documents in a special STORIES folder. Here’s how you set out to do that:

1. Open the SAMPLE.ZIP archive. 2. Right-click to select the THERAVEN.TXT file. 3. Choose the Copy command from the pop-up menu. The file is now copied to the Windows clipboard. As long as you don’t copy (or cut) anything else, Windows remembers the file and can create a duplicate with the Paste command.

4. Click the Back button. The Documents or My Documents folder window is selected.

5a. In Windows Vista, choose the New Folder command from the Organize toolbar button’s menu. 5b. In Windows XP, click the Make New Folder button. A new folder is instantly created, given the name New Folder, and selected for renaming.

6. Type STORIES as the folder’s new name. The text you type, STORIES, replaces New Folder as the folder’s new name. 7. Press the Enter key to lock in the new name. 8. Open the STORIES folder. 9. Press Ctrl+V to paste the copied file from the archive into the new folder. The archived fileTHERAVEN.TXT is extracted, exploded, de-compressed — what have you! — and placed into the STORIES folder. The file you extracted from the archive is still in the archive. You’ve merely “exploded out” a copy of the file. You can still use the file in the archive to spawn another file if you like. Or, if you’re done with the archive, you can delete it. But don’t! Keep the SAMPLE.ZIP archive window open for the next section’s tutorial. Extracting all the files In most cases you’ll probably want to extract all the files from an archive at once. For example, when you receive a ZIP file as an e-mail attachment or download a ZIP file from the Internet. Windows is aware of this, so it makes available a command called “Extract all files” to all Compressed Folder windows. In Windows Vista, Extract All Files is a button found on the toolbar. In Windows XP, Extract All Files is found as a link in the folder tasks area on the left side of the window. When you choose the “Extract all files” command, a special wizard runs. You use the Wizard to select a location for placing the compressed files (and any folders) stored inside the archive.

To see how the Extraction Wizard works, return to the SAMPLE.ZIP archive window (if necessary). Because Windows Vista and Windows XP differ at this point, I’m presenting two separate sets of steps. In Windows Vista, follow these steps to extract all files from an archive:

1. Click the toolbar button Extract All Files from the Compressed Folder window.

In Windows Vista, the extraction process is distilled down to one window, as shown above. Windows guesses that you want to extract the files into a new folder with the same name as the Compressed folder. Above, and on your screen, it’s named SAMPLE and place din the same folder (Documents) as the Compressed Folder. If you want to choose another folder, then you need to use the Browse button to help locate that folder: clicking the Browse button displays a dialog box where you can choose another folder, or you can click the Make New Folder button to (surprise!) make a new folder.

2. Click the Extract button to remove all the files from the archive. When the operation is complete, the new folder window opens, displaying all the extracted files. The original Compressed Folder still exists, and the files can be extracted again, to another folder, or whatever. In Windows XP, follow this set of steps to extract all files form an archive:

1. Click on the “Extract all files” link in the Folder Tasks section on the left wise of theSAMPLE.ZIP window. Clicking on the link starts the Extraction Wizard.

2. Click the Next button.

The most important part of the Extraction Wizard. The second step is to choose a folder into which the extracted files will be placed. Windows normally assumes you want to create a folder and name it the same name as the archive folder. In this case, the new folder would be named SAMPLE and placed into the My Documents folder. If that’s what you want, you would click the Next button at this point — but that’s too easy! You can use the Browse button to choose another folder:

3. Click the Browse button. Browse buttons open a Browse dialog box, which works a lot like the Open dialog box. The Browse dialog box allows you to sift and sort through the disk drives and folders on your computer system to look for a specific location, or to create a new folder in a specific location. In the case of the Browse button in the Extraction Wizard, a “Select a destination” dialog box is used to help you find a location for the archive’s files. Browsing for a folder in which to place the extracted files. Note the “Make New Folder” button? You can use it to create a new folder, should you want to do so. Say you want to extract the folders into the Shared Documents folder, which is where Windows XP likes to keep documents you plan on sharing with others:

4. Click the + by My Computer. Clicking the + opens the My Computer folder to display a list of disk drives and storage locations in your computer system.

5. Scroll through the list to find the Shared Documents folder. 6. Click on the Shared Documents folder to select it. 7. Click the OK button. And you’re returned back to the Extraction Wizard. The location you’ve selected now appears in the dialog box. The next step extracts the files to that location.

8. Click the Next button. The files are extracted, all of them. After being extract, the final screen in the Wizard appears.

9. Ensure that there is a check mark by the item “Show extracted files.” This is naturally what you want to do; to see the files you extracted after you finish the wizard.

10. Click the Finish button. The Wizard dialog box closes and a new window appears, the Shared Documents window. You can see your documents — the three sample text files — located in this window. After you’re done with the archive, then what? When all the files have been removed from the archive, you can delete the ZIP file. For example, when I get a ZIP file attachment in e-mail and I extract all the files from it to a specific folder, I then generally delete the ZIP archive file. But I do this only after ensuring that all the files extracted properly. (Check the folder to which the files were extracted, and even open the files to see if they’re okay.) Also, if you use a ZIP archive to collect and send a variety of files to someone via e-mail, you can delete that ZIP archive — but wait until the message has been sent. In fact, I generally wait until the message has been received and acknowledged before I remove the ZIP archive. That way I can re-send the ZIP file attachment should the recipient somehow have missed it. There are two times I do not delete the ZIP archive or Compressed Folder file. First, whenever I download a program from the Internet, I keep the original ZIP archive in my DOWNLOADS folder. I do that to ensure that I’m able to re-install the file later, should I want to do so. Second, if I’m creating an archive to store files long term, obviously I don’t want to delete it! For example, I have every text and graphics file from every book and magazine article I’ve ever written. For some of the older books I placed the graphics files and images into a ZIP archive so that they wouldn’t occupy as much disk storage. That way I have access to the images should I want them, but because I know that won’t be as often I can keep them in the archive and save a wee bit of disk space.

Tutorial Cleanup You’re done with the tutorial! Here are things you can do to remove the files and folders added to your system during the tutorial. Removing these items is optional: In the Shared Documents folder, remove the three files:

THERAVEN.TXT TOMSAWYER.TXT WARWOLDS.TXT If you want to keep the stories, then I recommend keeping them in the STORIES folder (in Documents or My Documents folder). Then you can remove these files from the Documents or My Documents folder:

SAMPLE.ZIP THERAVEN.TXT TOMSAWYER.TXT WARWOLDS.TXT If you want to remove everything, then remove the STORIES folder as well, or remove it later on. Drawbacks to ZIP Archives The ZIP archive isn’t the perfect way to compress and store everything. Like most solutions, it has its drawbacks.

What doesn’t compress well Many files you create or use on your computer are already compressed, some compressed even better than what a ZIP archive can do. For example, JPEG image files are generally compressed enough and you save no disk space by placing them into a ZIP archive. Ditto for MP3 audio files as well as any of the various video file formats. Placing these already-compressed files into a ZIP archive saves you no space. So if you want to send that 15MB movie file via e-mail, putting it into a ZIP archive won’t reduce the file size at all. In fact, in some cases the ZIP archive file may even belarger than the original file. (The solution in that case is to burn the movie file to an optical disc and just mail it to your pal.) Other types of files may not compress well either. The only true way to know for certain is to use Windows to place a single file into a ZIP archive or Compressed Folder. Then check the file size of the ZIP archive versus the original file. If the ZIP archive isn’t that much more noticeably smaller, then you’ll know that putting the file’s into the archive won’t make much sense.

You cannot use the Open command to access compressed files Despite that Windows refers to ZIP archives as “Compressed Folders” they’re not really not folders! Now you can use Windows Explorer to open the archive and view it — just like a folder. That’s handy. But what you cannot do is use a program’s Open command to browse through a Compressed Folder. The best way to deal with files in a Compressed Folder is to decompress them, extracting them out into a real folder. Once in a real folder, you can work on the files.

An extracted file may have its read-only attribute set For some reasons, files stored in a Compressed Folder/ZIP archive might be extracted and be read-only. That is, a special protection is put on the file that allows you to open and view the file, but not to delete it or modify it in any way. You can only “read” the file’s data, which his where “read only” comes from. To remove the read-only attribute of any file, follow these steps:

1. Locate the file’s icon in a Windows Explorer window. 2. Right-click on the file’s icon. A pop-up menu appears.

3. Choose the Properties command from the pop-up menu. The file’s (or folder’s) Properties dialog box appears.

4. Remove the check mark by the “Read-only” item. This item is found in the bottom of the General tab, where lots of information about the file is listed. Click in the box with your mouse to remove the checkmark. If there is not checkmark there, then you’re done. 5. Click the OK button. The file now has its Read Only attribute removed, and it can be modified or deleted like any other file. There are rare cases where removing the Read Only attribute, as described in the above steps, will not work. This usually means that the file is inside a folder that is marked as Read Only, and therefore the file’s attribute cannot be changed. In that case, copy the file to another folder and repeat the above steps to remove the Read Only attribute. Advanced ZIP Archive Stuff If you’ve gone through the tutorials at the start of this document, then you’re pretty well versed in the art of the ZIP archive. Not everything was covered in the tutorial, however. The following sections round out and complete your ZIP Archive education. Note that these sections do not contain the same handholding tutorials as it’s assumed you’ve already got a grip on the basics.

Creating a ZIP Archive the Awkward Way One of the earmarks of the Windows is that it gives you many ways to accomplish the same task. For example, there are about 14 different ways to copy a file from one folder to another. The same madness exists with ZIP files; there is an obscure and weird way to create an archive, one that I’ve not used, but you may find it handy.

1. Open a folder window. The folder will contain the new, empty Compressed Folder.

2. Right-click in the folder window. 3. Choose NewCompressed (zipped) Folder.

A new icon appears in the window, given the name New Compressed (zipped) Folder.zip. The name is selected for editing. Good.

3. Type in a new name for the ZIP archive, such as AWKWARD.ZIP. Remember that if you see the ZIP file extension before you rename the file, you’ll need to type .ZIP as part of the file’s name. 4. Press the Enter key to lock in the new name. And an empty archive is created. This is nothing in the archive. It’s empty! But at this point you can add files to it, as described earlier in this document.

Feel free to delete the AWKWARD.ZIP archive you just created. Installing a Program from a ZIP Archive Many of the programs you download from the Internet are saved in ZIP archives. Again, this has to do with the ZIP archive’s history; that’s what the file format was designed for! If you want the program, you’ll have to do three things: 1. Transfer the ZIP archive from the Internet to your PC. 2. De-compress the files from the ZIP archive to a folder on your computer. 3. Run the INSTALL or SETUP program to actually install the . I’ll assume that you’ve already transferred, or downloaded, the ZIP archive from the Internet into your computer. Further, I’ll assume that you’ve followed my advice in PCs For Dummies (and elsewhere) and saved the ZIP archive in a Downloads folder. So the next step is to decompress the files, removing them from the archive:

1. Right-click on the ZIP archive. A special pop-up menu appears, one only used with Compressed Folders in Windows.

2. Choose Extract All from the pop-up menu. The Extraction Wizard begins. Refer to the section “Extracting all the files” earlier in this document for what happens next. Of course, you’ve only completed the second step here. You still have to install the program, which is done by locating the SETUP or INSTALL program inside the folder just created. If there is a README or README.DOC (or similar) file in that folder, open it to get more information. When you’re done installing, you can delete all the extracted files and the folder created; there is still a copy of those files stored in the original ZIP archive you downloaded. The duplicates extracted are no longer necessary. The Compressed Folder as EXE File Syndrome

Compressed Folders can also appears as EXE, or program files. Officially, the program file is known as aself-extracting ZIP archive. It’s not really a program at all, but rather an automated ZIP utility that de-compresses its own files. Most of the programs you download from the Internet are in the self-extracting ZIP format.

This downloaded program file is really a compressed ZIP archive in disguise. Self-extracting ZIP files must be created by a third party ZIP utility, such as WinZIP. You cannot use Windows alone to create one of those files.

Folders in ZIP Archives Yes, it’s entirely possible to put folders into ZIP archive files. A ZIP archive holds files and folders just like other folders in Windows. You can have folder within folders within folders. In fact, you can even put Compressed Folders inside of Compressed folders. There really are no limits or restrictions. There is, however, one secret: You cannot create a folder inside a ZIP archive, at least not by using Windows itself. The only way to put a folder inside a Compressed Folder/ZIP archive is to copy it to the archive. That works just like copying any file, as demonstrated in the tutorials, but instead the entire folder — all its contents, including other folders — is copied into the archive. When you view the archive in Windows you can open the folders inside a compressed folder and view the contents. And when you extract the folder from the archive, it decompresses out into a folder. By the way, placing a Compressed Folder inside of a Compressed Folder doesn’t save any disk space.

Password Protection While Windows lacks the ability to password protect individual files or folders, you can add a password a Compressed Folder. That means that only when someone has the proper password can files be extracted from the archive. Don’t get your hopes up too high! Password protection of Compressed Folders is a feature offered only in Windows XP. You need a third party utility like WinZIP to password-protect folders in Windows Vista. The following sections on password protection apply only to Windows XP. Creating a password protected archive Follow these steps to create a sample ZIP archive with password protection:

1. Open the My Documents folder. 2. Locate a file in the My Documents folder and select it. It can be any file. Or you can click on a folder to archive the folder. It doesn’t matter what you’re archiving here, as long as the archive you create has something inside of it (e.g., don’t create an empty archive).

3. Choose FileNewCompressed (zipped) Folder 4. Type SECRET.ZIP as the archive’s new name. The new name you type replaces the old name. Remember to include the .ZIP part if it appeared in the file’s name originally.

5. Press Enter to lock in the new name. 6. Open the SECRET.ZIP archive. 7. From the menu in the SECRET.ZIP window, choose File>Add a Password. The Add Password dialog box appears. It should look familiar to you if you’ve ever worked with passwords on the computer before.

8. Into the “Password” text box type secret as the password. Type secret all lower case. 9. Press the Tab key. You’re moved to the Confirm Password text box.

10. Type the password again. secret 11. Click the OK button. If the two passwords don’t match, you’ll be asked to re-enter them. Remember to type the password in lower case! Now the Compressed Folder has a password attached.

12. Close the SECRET.ZIP archive window. 13. Open the My Documents window (if necessary). You should see the SECRET.ZIP archive sitting there, innocent as a bug, but secretly password protected. Continue with this tutorial in the next section. Opening the archive You won’t know that you’re dealing with a password protected Compressed Folder until you try to extract data from it. Here’s what you’ll find:

1. Open the SECRET.ZIP archive. This archive was created in the previous section, and it is password protected. Are you surprised that you can open the file? No problem! But if you try to look at a text file or extract any file from the archive, you’ll suddenly notice the password protection.

2. Choose FileExtract All. The Extraction Wizard runs, just as you would expect.

3. Click the Next button. Just for giggles, assume the extraction folder is okay for the next step:

4. Click the Next button.

Ah! The Password needed dialog box. This is where you’d type the password to extract the file(s) from the archive.

5. Click Cancel. 6. Click Cancel to stop the Wizard. 7. Close the SECRET.ZIP archive window. You may delete the SECRET.ZIP file. Note that the password may not protect text or graphics files from being previewed in the archive. Also note that adding new files to the archive may not protect them with the same password. In that case, you might way to remove the password, then re- apply it after files are added to the archive.

What do to when you forget the Compressed Folder password You can’t do anything. You’re screwed.

Donít forget that password! Removing the password from a Compressed Folder The password can easily be removed from the compressed folder by choosing the FileRemove Password command. Type in the proper password and the ZIP archive becomes un-protected and anyone can extract any file(s).

E-mailing a ZIP Archive E-mailing and ZIP archives go back to the original reason that ZIP archives were created: sending a bundle of files to another person without wasting time or disk space. The way I use E-mail and ZIP archives is to create a temporary archive on the desktop, as described earlier in this document. Then I attach that ZIP archive to the mail message I’m sending. The command to attach a file to an e-mail message in both Windows Mail and Outlook Express is InsertFile Attachment, or you just click on the big paper clip

icon, which is the Attach File to Message toolbar button. Pluck the ZIP archive from the list of files, and then when you click the Send button the archive is e-mailed along with your message. After the message has cleared you can delete the archive. I generally wait a day or so to ensure that the recipient got the file. That way I can easily re-send the same ZIP archive should I need to. Note that creating a ZIP archive is one of the only ways to send someone a folder in e-mail. Normally you cannot attach a folder to an e-mail message. (Windows just won't let you do it, not in any e-mail program.) The only solution is to compress the folder and then send that Compressed Folder instead.

File shortcut icons have the tell-tale arrow in their lower left corner. Also, while I’m on the subject, note that you should never e-mail file shortcuts. The shortcut is merely a file “stub” or reference. Sending it via e-mail, or adding it to a compressed file, just doesn’t work. Instead you should always attach or compress the original file. A Few Words About WinZIP As an alternative to using the Compressed Folder in Windows you can take advantage of the WinZIP utility, which offers more options and better control over your ZIP archives than Windows provides. For example, you can rename files in an archive, create self-extracting EXE (program) file archives, create temporary archives for quickly e-mailing files, and many other tricks.

You can obtain a free evaluation copy of WinZIP from http://www.winzip.com/. The real copy is only $29.95 US and it’s worth it. (I am not associated with WinZIP other than being a satisfied customer.) Another archiving solution, one popular with the trendy geek set, is WinRAR from RarSoft, http://www.rarsoft.com/. It’s like WinZip on steroids, supporting a higher level of compression, better compatibility across the board with various file compression programs, plus a more inventive interface and feedback than WinZip offers. While I’m not a full WinRAR convert, I can recommend the product and know many fellow computer nerds who sing its praises daily. An evaluation copy of WinRAR can be downloaded free, or you can purchase it on- line for $29 US. Both WinZip and WinRAR add special commands to an icon’s pop-up Shortcut menu as well as the Send To submenu. You can use those commands to easily extract or add files to an archive. Blue Compression Archiving Archiving is not limited to ZIP files alone. Windows also comes with something I call blue file archiving, from the blue font color Windows gives files and folders that are slapped with a special compression. As with ZIP file archives, it helps to know a bit of history before you dive into the full blue archiving topic.

Blue History In the late 1980s an interesting problem arose for those early computer users: they were running out of hard disk space. Disk storage technology normally went along at a steady clip. But as computers grew to do more, and programs grew larger, disk space was suddenly at a premium. The best solution for the disk storage shortage was to buy a second hard drive. Most PCs come with extra room inside for a second hard drive. And, of course, it helps to buy a computer with a nice, roomy hard drive in the first place. But this hardware solution wasn’t possible for many PC users back in the late 1980s. If you had a PC way back when, it probably came with a 40MB hard drive. Yes, that’s megabytes and not gigabytes. The 40MB hard drive was standard, but lots of PCs were still sold with 20MB or smaller hard drives. As you can guess, those things filled up quickly. At the time it was possible to buy a 100MB hard drive, which was top-of-the-line. But at $10 per megabyte, the cost was out of the reach of most people. So a software solution was devised. Hello, Stacker! A company called STAC came up with a program called Stacker. By using Stacker, you could instantly boost the amount of storage on any PC hard drive. So where you had a physical 40MB hard drive in your computer, by converting the drive to a Stacker drive, you would have an 80MB — or even larger — hard drive. For PC users in need of disk space, the Stacker solution was a godsend. The program sold like crazy. Soon people in need of extra disk space had plenty, all without paying up several hundred dollars for a second or newer hard drive.

How Stacker Worked The Stacker program wasn’t new technology, but rather a clever implementation of existing technology. What Stacker did was to use on-the-fly compression to make files take up less space on a hard drive. In fact, Stacker used similar compression technology to what the then popular ZIP archive file was using.

Stacker first creates a compressed, virtual disk drive. What Stacker would do is compress an entire hard drive, essentially creating one large ZIP-like archive. Unlike a ZIP archive, however, files would be compressed automatically as they were saved or created. Files were likewise decompressed as they were opened. As long as Stacker managed all disk input and output, the files would be compressed and disk storage space was saved. Stacker then oversees all files written to and read from the virtual, compressed disk drive. There were two downsides to the Stacker approach. The first was that many disk utilities, such as Norton’s, wouldn’t work properly with a compressed drive. The second problem was that it was impossible to decompress a Stacker drive that was larger than its host drive. For example, if you had a 40MB hard drive but Stacker had put 60MB of stuff on that drive (via compression), then you could not get all your stuff off the hard drive (unless you had a second, un-compressed drive). In the end, Stacker proved to be a transitional technology. Eventually hard drive storage caught up with computer users, and the Stacker technology was no longer needed.

Microsoft Seethes with Jealousy During Stacker’s heyday the STAC Company was making a ton of money. Historically speaking, Bill Gates does not like other companies making money from some technology where Microsoft could also make money. So, in a typical move, Microsoft came up with a competing product against Stacker. They called their produce DiskSpace, but later renamed it DoubleSpace. (Or it could be the other way around.) The first version of the Microsoft competition turned out to be a direct copy of the Stacker program. There was a lawsuit. Then Microsoft came out with a better program, one that integrated directly with DOS and Windows. There was another lawsuit. Eventually, either because of the lawsuits, or just that people started buying larger hard drives, the whole issue of disk compression became passé. But the technology to compress files and disk drives was still available to Microsoft, and it could be used — if you could find it on older versions of Windows. With today’s versions of Windows, however, Microsoft decided to bring back their disk and file compression technology. It’s called merely compression, but because compressed files show up using blue text I refer to it asblue compression. Disk Compression Today Microsoft doesn’t push Blue Compression as a solution for low hard drive storage space, at least not these days. Instead, Blue Compression is more of a file attribute, one that can be assigned to single files, groups of files, folders (and all files in those folders), or to every file on the hard drive. It can even be done automatically, wherein Windows locates seldom-used files and simply compresses them to save disk space. The following sections describe Blue Compression in more detail.

Activating a file’s Blue Compression attribute Applying Blue Compression to a file means that Windows automatically reduces the file’s size, making it take up less space on the disk. Unlike a ZIP archive, the compressed file appears normally, save for theblue text Windows uses to display the file’s name. Beyond that, the file can be opened or examined just like any other file. The difference s that Windows automatically decompresses the file when it’s opened, and the file is re-compressed when it’s saved back to disk.

Compressing a single file Follow these steps to compress a single file:

1. Right-click the file or folder you want to blue compress. 2. Choose Properties from the pop-up menu. The file’s Properties dialog box appears, which details more information about the file as well as other options. One of the options available is the file’s attributes, which are settings that control the file’s behavior, appearance, and other doo- dads. One of those attributes controls Blue Compression.

3. In the General tab, click the Advanced button. Clicking the Advanced button displays the Advanced Attributes dialog box. Locate the Compress or Encrypt area near the bottom of the dialog box.

(The “is ready for archiving” option deals with backing up files, not ZIP archiving or Blue Compression.) 4. Put a check mark by “Compress contents to save disk space.” 5. Click OK. The Advanced Attributes dialog box bows out.

6. Click OK to close the Properties dialog box. The file is now compressed on disk. How can you tell? Look at the file in the window: The text below or to the side of the file appears in blue, not black. That’s how you can spy a file that has Blue Compression active.

The tell-tale sign of a Blue Compressed file or folder. The blue text even shows up in an Open or Save As dialog box. And note that unlike ZIP archives, or Compressed Folders, you can use the Open dialog box to open any Blue Compressed file (or folder).

It Didn’t Work! Blue Compression works only on NTFS-formatted disk drives. If you have an older disk drive or have chosen to format your hard drive using HPFS or FAT32, then you cannot use Blue Compression. You cannot blue compress files that are encrypted. Likewise you cannot encrypt a file that’s been compressed. Finally, you may merely be fooled because the file is compressed, yet Windows is configured not to show the compressed file in color. To confirm that Windows will show blue compressed files in color, follow these steps:

1. Display the Folder Options dialog box. You can open this window by opening the Folder Options icon in the Control Panel.

2. Click the View tab. In the scrolling list of options, near the bottom, you’ll find one titled, “Show encrypted or compressed NTFS files in color.”

3. Click to put a check mark by the option “Show encrypted or compressed NTFS files in color.” 4. Click OK. Examining a Blue Compressed file You can see how much disk space a compressed file saves by examining the file’s Properties dialog box.

1. Right-click on a Blue Compressed file icon. 2. Choose Properties from the pop-up menu. The file’s Properties dialog box appears. 3. Locate the two size values. The first, “Size” shows the actual physical size of the file, the total number of bytes the file occupies. The second, “Size on disk” value shows you how much room the file occupies on the hard drive, or whatever disk the file is stored on. For a Blue Compressed file, the “Size on disk” value will be much less than the file’s physical size. That’s because the file is stored in a compressed format. A normal file, one that’s not Blue Compressed, usually shows a larger value for the “Size on disk.” That’s because files are stored in units calledclusters . So, depending on the disk’s structure, the “Size on disk” value could be anywhere from a few bytes to 8K or 16K larger than the file’s physical size.

4. Click the OK button to close the Properties dialog box. Because Blue Compression uses similar algorithms and compression techniques to ZIP files, remember that some files compress better than others. So you’ll see better compression with text files or Windows BMP (bitmapped graphics) files than with other types of files. And certain files, such as MP3, TIFF, JPG, and video files, won’t compress well at all.

Compressing several files You can apply Blue Compression to a group of files just as easily as you can one file. Here’s how:

1. Select the files as a group. Refer to PCs For Dummies for instructions on how to select files in groups.

2. Right-click one of the files, and choose Properties from the pop-up menu. A Properties dialog box for the whole group appears. It’s not as detailed as the Properties dialog box for a single file.

3. Click the Advanced button. The Advanced Attributes dialog box shows up.

4. Put a check mark by “Compress contents to save disk space.” 5. Click OK to close the Advanced Attributes dialog. 6. Click OK to close the Properties dialog box. The files selected now have Blue Compression applied to them, and their text shows up as blue. Compressing a folder Applying Blue Compression to a folder works just like applying it to a single file; follow the steps in the section “Compressing a single file” earlier in this document. Note that all the files in the folder, plus any other folders inside and files inside those folders — all of it will have Blue Compression when the operation is done.

Compressing a whole disk I don’t recommend applying blue compression to an entire disk drive; instead, merely blue compress your own folders on that disk. That way you can be selective about what gets compressed. For example, apply Blue Compression to folders that would contain those documents that compress easily. You’ll save some disk space that way. Yet on that same hard drive leave your music files in their folder uncompressed. (Music files don’t compress well.) So anyway, if you’re hell-bent, here’s how to blue compress an entire disk drive:

1. Open the My Computer icon on the desktop. The My Computer window appears, listing your computer’s storage devices.

2. Right-click on the icon for the drive you want to blue compress. 3. Choose Properties from the pop-up menu.

The disk drive’s Properties dialog box appears. Near the bottom of the General tab in the Properties dialog box you’ll find the Compression option. Note that this option shows up only on NTFS formatted drives. Other disk formats, such as FAT32, do not compress.

4. Put a check mark by “Compress drive to save disk space. 5. Click the OK button. And the drive gets compressed. You can uncompress the drive later if you like, but note that when the drive’s contents exceed the size of the original, un-compressed drive, you’ll be in trouble! This is yet another reason why I do not recommend this approach. Decompressing Blue Compression There really is no reason to decompress a blue compressed file or folder. Windows handles the decompression for you whenever you open the file. And if you copy or move the file to a removable disk, then the file is decompressed automatically to allow other computers to read it. If you do want to decompress a file or folder, and remove it’s blue compression attribute, then repeat the steps in the previous section(s) to remove the check mark by “Compress contents to save disk space.” That’s it.

When you shouldn’t use Blue Compression Whenever a Blue Compressed folder or file is accessed, Windows automatically de- compresses it, which adds time to the operation but still the compressed file takes up less disk space. By all means, if you have the room on your hard drive, or if you buy a second hard drive, then use it for storage. Keep your files uncompressed. While the files do occupy more room that way, getting at them is a tad faster than when compressing them. Also note that some files are compressed already and so saving them in a blue compressed state doesn’t save you any disk space and may actually cost you time. For example, GIF, JPG, MP3, MPEG and TIFF files are all stored in pre-compressed formats. You cannot save any disk space by blue compressing these files. So if you’re creating an MP3 music archive, just keep it uncompressed. Likewise, do not attempt to use compression on optical discs. It’s best to keep the files there as “raw” as possible, so that the files can be read by other computers are well as future operating systems that may not recognize Windows compression.

It seems like ZIP archives are a bother with Blue Compression around Indeed, why bother with the manual overhead of a ZIP archive when Windows can compress files and folders on-the-fly? But ZIP archives still do have a place. While it may be inefficient to store your files in a ZIP archive, or Compressed Folder, they still do come in handy for sending things via e-mail or on the Internet. So if you’re going to be transmitting files to another computer, then archiving them in a ZIP archive has several advantages: • Many files can be compressed into one folder so that everything can be sent at once. • The files in the ZIP archive are compressed, so the files take less time to send and receive. • The ZIP archive is the most common file archive format on the PC, as well as the Macintosh. Even computers can deal with ZIP archives. None of this can be done with Blue Compression. ZIP Archives Versus Blue Compression: Pros and Cons Table 1 lists the pros and cons of this type of compression versus using a ZIP file for archiving. My bottom-line advice, however, is this: If you’re archiving files on a hard drive and want to save on space, Blue-Compress folders containing file that compress well. Don’t compress folders containing music or other files that don’t compress well. Only use ZIP archives, or Compressed Folders, when sending files over the Internet. If possible, try to avoid using them on your hard drive or for archiving unless you’re using Windows XP and taking advantage of their password security.

Co m p r e s s i o n Te c h n i q u e Pr o s Co n s Blue Compressed Files/ Files are still accessible Compressing and Folders by Windows and can be decompressing is done manipulated using all the as the file is accessed, file commands which slows disk access somewhat Compressed files lose their attribute when the file is copied or moved Cannot e-mail a blue compressed folder (just as you cannot e-mail any folder, only the contents of that folder) ZIP archives It’s really a file, which can Other computers must also Compressed Folders be sent to other computers use Compressed Folders or e-mailed or a ZIP file utility to access the files Allows password-protection Cannot open or access files for each Compressed in a Compressed Folder; Folder files must be removed from the folder to be made useful Table 1. Differences between Compressed Folders and Blue Compressed files.