How to Zip a File on a Mac In this Article: Use the Finder Use a Third-Party Program Zipping one file using the Terminal Zipping multiple files using the Terminal Community Q&A If you have a lot of old documents and files taking up space on your computer, you can compress them into an archive to save space.

Part 1: How to Create Password Protected Zip Folder on Mac • Find the file or folder you want to lock and right-click on it, select “Compress” and click the mouse to zip the file. • Go to Finder, scroll down to “Utilities” and select “Terminal” from the folder. Or you press command and space keys at the same time to launch the Spotlights search. Type “Terminal” in Spotlight on Mac to open it. • Type the following command to encrypt a file or folder. Zip -e archive_name target_folder zip -er archive_name target_folder • Then the archive utility window will pop out and ask you to enter a password.

Type into the password and click “OK”. • Verify the password by typing it again when prompted and click “OK” to close the window. Part 2: How to Open Encrypted Zip Files on Mac To unlock a password protected Zip file, double click it and then enter the password. Or you can right click on it and choose an application you want to use to open it.

However, if you forgot the password for the encrypted Zip file or folder, things will become a little annoying. You can still choose the “Terminal” application to unlock it. • Open “Terminal Utility” on your Mac by searching in the Spotlights or fining the icon on Launchpad. • When the Terminal window shows up, type “unzip -P password (Drag zip file) -d (Drag your destination folder)”. • Press “Enter” and it will show the password for the locked Zip file in seconds. • Now you can double-click the Zip and enter the password to get access to it quickly.

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Compressed (i.e., archived or zipped) files may contain many separate files in one large archive, which often take up less space than the original files. Before you can read or run all the separate files and programs, you must use an archiving program to extract the files from the archive. Zip is a standard compression and archival format. If you're using Mac OS X, the operating system compresses and decompresses zip files for you.

Compressing a file or folder • Highlight the selection to be compressed. • Somewhere within the selected files, right-click, and then choose Compress. If you do not have a mouse with a right-click button, highlight the selection and hold down the Control key while clicking the trackpad. • A.zip file will be created in the same directory as your selected files. Note that your original files (from which the compressed file was made) are not deleted automatically, and will remain in the directory. Note: You cannot name the zip file during its creation (the name given by default is archive.zip), but you can rename it afterward.

If you choose to create another compressed archive in the same folder without first moving or renaming the original one, there is a chance you will overwrite the original one. Decompressing a file or folder • Highlight and right-click the archive you wish to decompress.

• Choose Open. This will decompress the file or folder and place it in the same directory as the compressed file. Note: The compressed file is not deleted automatically and will remain in the directory also. Using the Terminal The zip utilities are also available from the Terminal application.