WinZip used to always have free upgrades. Now they sell upgrade assurance when you purchase your copy. To get an upgrade from Version 9 or 10, you must apply giving details of your original purchase.

WinZip is now at version 11.2 Last revised 2008-04-09. If you mainly just unzip, try WinZip standard at $30.00 USD . If you create zips, you will want the command line WZZIP add-on included in the WinZip pro package at $60.00 USD . This Feature Matrix will help you decide which version best suits your needs. Oddly though the command line features are bundled as part of the WinZip pro package, you must download and install them separately. I gather the authors are still thinking in terms of saving every last byte transferred over dial-up access. You can try both before you buy. There is also a peculiar offer to give you WinZip free if you buy something unrelated to WinZip from one of their partners.

The main new feauture of WinZip 11.2 is Unicode filenames. Unfortunately, this is not part of the PKZip format, but a proprietary WinZip extension. Normally WinZip just stores in the local 8-bit code page encoding.

Using WinZip GUI to Unzip a *.zip

1. Click “File”.
2. Click “Open Achive”.
3. Select the zip file you want to unpack.
4. Click “Open” .
5. You will now be able to see the files inside the zip and their directory names on the far right. Let’s assume you want to unpack them all into a directory tree.
6. Click “Extract”.
7. Select the directory where you want the tree of unpacked files to grow off of.
8. Select “All files/folders” in archive.
9. Uncheck “Open Explorer Window.
10. Check/uncheck “Overwrite existing files”. If in doubt, check yes.
11. Uncheck “Skip older files”.
12. Check “Use folder names”.
13. Click “Extract”.
14. Click “File”.
15. Click “Exit”.

Using WinZip GUI to Zip a directory tree

1. Click “File”.
2. click “New Achive”.
3. Select the name of the zip file you want create and the directory where you want to create it.
4. Check “Add Dialog”.
5. Click “OK”.
6. Check “Include subfolders”.
7. Check/uncheck “Include full path info”. If in doubt, check yes.
8. Select “Action : add (and replace) files”.
9. Select “Compression : normal”.
10. Uncheck “Encrypt Added Files”.
11. Uncheck “Store files in 8.3 format”.
12. Uncheck “Include only if attribute bit is set”.
13. Uncheck “Reset archive attribute”.
14. Check “Include System and hidden files”.
15. Click “Add with wildcards”.
16. Examine the files to make sure you got the ones you wanted and they have the correct directory names.
17. Click “File”.
18. Click “Exit”.

Command Line Use

The switches are similar to PKZIP. The trickiest one is -p which includes folder information for any subfolders of the directory added, and -P which also adds any higher level folder names mentioned on the command line. Try both and will become clear the difference.

Starting with version 10 the command line utilities are an extra cost option. You need the professional edition.

Include Lists

Exclude Lists

rem Here is a generic way to use Winzip, with exclude and include list files.
rem -P will but all directory names mentioned in the list file in the zip,
rem but not the higher order stuff. Every directory and wildcard must
rem be explicitly mentioned in the list file.
rem -u means update.

WZZIP -Pu -x@C:\env\exclude.list E:\mindprod\zips\cmp1.zip @C:\env\cmp1.list

Tips

• Although not configurable as a column, there is an option to display the archive comment when opening a zip file. Click options ⇒ configuration ⇒ miscellaneous ⇒ show comments when opening zip files.
• By default Winzip will not show all caps filenames correctly. It will show ANAME.TXT as Aname.txt. To see the file name displayed exactly as it is recorded click options ⇒ configuration ⇒ View ⇒ Allow all upper case file names..
• Though Winzip does not have an explicit find command, you can click Actions ⇒ select files ⇒ enter a wildcard. It will then pull matches to the top and select them.
• Winzip timestamps are not kept is UTC, but in local time. This means that DST changes will trigger Winzip archived files to be updated, since their local timestamps change, even when the absolute UTC timestamp does not.

 Winzip Courier