Zip files are "archives" used for distributing and storing files. Zip files contain one or more files. Usually the files "archived" in a Zip are compressed to save space. Zip files make it easy to group files and make transporting and copying these files faster.

What About ARJ, LZH, Gzip, TAR, And CAB Files?

These files provide most of the benefits of Zip files, but use different file formats. WinZip can handle Zip, TAR, gzip, and CAB files by itself. External programs are required for the less frequently used ARJ, ARC, and LZH formats.

Why Do People Use Zip Files?

Zip files save time and space, and make downloading software and transferring e-mail attachments faster. Typical uses for Zip files include:

• Most files available on ftp sites, bulletin boards and electronic services like CompuServe are distributed as archives. Two benefits of using archives for electronic file distribution are that only one file transfer operation ("download") is required to obtain all related files, and file transfer time is minimized because the files in an archive are compressed.
• It is often useful to send a group of related files to an associate. Rather than distributing individual files it is often easier to distribute the files as an archive to benefit from the file grouping and compression.
• Some files are important but used infrequently. To save disk space simply compress these files into an archive when they are not used, and decompress them only when needed.

Where Does WinZip Fit In?

WinZip makes it easy for Windows users to work with archives. WinZip features an intuitive point-and-click drag-and-drop interface for viewing, running, extracting, adding, deleting, and testing files in archives with a standard Windows interface. WinZip provides the same "friendly face" for all the aforementioned archive formats.

Can You Tell Me More About Archive Formats?

• Zip files are the most common archive format. WinZip does not require external programs for basic archive operations.
• ARJ files are another popular archive format. ARJ files are manipulated by the ARJ program from Robert Jung, 2606 Village Road West, Norwood, Massachusetts 02062.
• LZH files are manipulated by the LHA program from Haruyasu Yoshizaki. LHA won the October 1991 PC Magazine Editor's Choice award as the best data compression utility.
• ARC is an older format. ARC files can be manipulated by several programs, including the original ARC, ARCE (also known as ARC-E), PKXARC, and PKUNPAK. Since almost all new archives are created in other formats and there is no single widely available program to manipulate ARC files, WinZip does not provide facilities to add to ARC files (however, all other WinZip functions are supported).
• The CAB format is used by Microsoft and some other vendors to distribute software. WinZip does not need external programs to view or extract the contents of CAB files.
• TAR, Z, GZ, TAZ, and TGZ files are often found on Unix-based Internet sites. The relationship between these file types is less straight forward than the aforementioned file formats. The important thing to remember is that WinZip handles all these formats the same way as Zip files, so you don't need to know the details. Here is more information on these formats: TAR stands for "Tape ARchive". This is an old file format and does not provide compression; it is used only to group files. Z files are compressed with the gzip program. GZ files are gzip files. Z and GZ files cannot contain multiple files. TAZ and TGZ files are TAR files compressed in "Z" or "GZ" format. Since almost all new archives are created in Zip format, WinZip does not provide facilities to add to or create files in these formats (however, all other WinZip functions are supported). WinZip does not require external programs when working with files in these formats.