SharePoint and Zip Files in Office 365: Do they get a long?

SharePoint (on premise and Office 365) took over our local files, we all know this, and with it, took away the cherished relationship we had with our zip applications like WinZip, WinRAR and the inbuilt Windows Compressed Folder tools. And frankly that was not fair :(.  We have grown accustomed to zipping files as we please and viewing what's inside our zip files with no more than a double click. We were able to unzip / uncompress our files quickly when we needed to.

 

Zip files stored in SharePoint don't allow any of this old behavior. It is hard to compress, unzip, and view zip files. Zip files there are just a big mystery. We have to first wait for large zip files to download, open them locally do what we need and re-upload them.

 

There are various solutions that could help with this issue. We developed an App Called Tru Copy Paste that allows users to view, zip and unzip files as they please right inside a SharePoint library. It also allows users to select files from SharePoint and download them as zip.

 

Here are some common things you might want to do in SharePoint and zip files.

 

View Content of Zip Files in SharePoint

Here's how Tru Copy paste can help end users see inside a zip file directly in SharePoint.

 

1. Click on the ... by the zip file you wish to view and click on ... again and then click on Extract

 

​

This will show the contents of the zip file.

 

Unzip Files and Folders Directly in SharePoint Library

You can extract the files by specifying the folder name you wish to extract the files to.

​

After clicking "Extract", the new folder is created with the files uncompressed.

​

Zipping Files in SharePoint

To zip files directly in a SharePoint library, select the files you wish to zip, then click on Copy in the Ribbon. When it shows the files copied click OK.

​

​

 

Go to the destination libarary or folder that you wish to place the zipped file / archive into, then click Paste from the Ribbon. Make sure you check the "Save as Zip" option. This will then provide you with a field to specify the name of the zip file. No need to specify the extension.

 

If you want to add those files to an existing zip file, the drop down will show existing zip files in that folder that you can select.

​

Click Paste and you will see a new zip file get created.

​

 

Download Files from SharePoint as Zip

If you wish to download some files or folders in SharePoint locally as a compressed zip, you can do that using the "Download as Zip" option on the Paste Page.

​

Once you paste, it will download a local copy as you can see in the image below.

​

Adding Files to Existing Zip Archive

You can also add files to an existing zip file, by selecting the zip files Tru Copy and Paste detected. The App will only detect zip files in the folder you are currently in.

​

 

Conclusion

Tru Copy and Paste is a great tool to fill the vaccum created by SharePoint in handling zip files and compressed files in on premise and Office 365. There may be other options, but this solution was built from the ground up to be comprehensive and handle all the various zip interactions. If we missed something please let us know or leave a comment below.