After 25 years on PCs I am delighting in learning all I can about working with my new Mac and OS X Mavericks.
I tried just now to open a zip file but was interrupted with an Archive Utility dialog:
Unable to expand "filename.zip" into "Downloads".
(Error 2 – No such file or directory.)
What to do? How can I access the contents of the zip file?
Best Answer
It's likely that
filename.zip
is either not actually a.zip
file, or is corrupted.Open up Terminal. You can access it by typing "Terminal" into Spotlight.
Enter the command(s) in the steps below into your command line prompt (triple click the line, copy it, and paste it into your prompt). Replace
filename.zip
with the actual name of thezip
file.If the name of the file contains spaces, you need to enter it differently using the escape
\
character. For example, if the file is namedcompressed crap.zip
, you'd typecompressed\ crap.zip
in the command line.Step 1:
Repair disk permissions. Once done, attempt to open the .zip file again. If you wish, you can do this from the command line.
Step 2:
Use file to confirm it's actually a zip file:
The output should be:
Zip archive data, at least v2.0 to extract
If you don't receive this output, post the output as a comment before proceeding.
Step 3:
After confirming it's actually a zip file, attempt to unzip it directly from the command line:
Step 4:
Step 3 will likely fail. Run the zip command to attempt to repair any corruption and salvage the contents of the archive (again, replace
filename.zip
withactualname.zip
):If it executes cleanly, you'll be directly returned to your prompt. Quit Terminal. Navigate to your Downloads folder and double click
Repairedversion.zip
- it should unzip without issue.Alternatively, it may not exit cleanly. If you're presented with
Is this a single-disk archive? (y/n):
Hit the
y
key. After you're returned to the prompt, again attempt to openRepairedversion.zip
from your Downloads folder. If you're still unable to open it, comment below with the warning(s) received from the command. If you've reached this point though, it's likely that the file is irreparably damaged.