How do most computer users zip up files to email or share or archive? WinZip.
It’s the popular archiving tool for Windows users (most of the world). What about Mac users? How do we archive files?
Apple builds a .zip archive tool right into the Finder. Grab a file or files with the mouse pointer, right click, then select Compress. Poof. It all gets zipped up into a nice archive file. And it’s free.
There’s just one problem. Not all zips are created equal. All too often I run into a Windows-using friend or co-worker who opens up a mess with my Mac-created .zip archive. To avoid the occasional .zip compatibility problem there’s a WinZip version for the Mac.
What does WinZip do? The list of functions is long when compared to Apple’s rather simplistic .zip archive.
WinZip will zip and unzip files with drag and drop. And, of course, it opens most archive formats including .zip, .Zipx, RAR, WAR, and others.
Even better, you can password protect a zipped up archive, and even encrypt only individual files within the zipped archive.
Even better than better, WinZip is smart enough to know that Mac files are different than Windows files, and it zips and captures all the Mac file’s meta data (and gives you an option to omit Mac meta data).
WinZip is also lets you edit files within a zipped archive without opening the file first.
All of these features are useful and can be used often in a business or school environment. The only real issues I have with WinZip are the price (compare to other Mac-centric archive tools), and the need to cough up your email address simply to download the trial version.