Windows – Can .zip folders created using Windows XP Pro be opened and extracted on Mac without any additional software

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I am a Windows user, and I would like to send a compressed archive/folder to my colleague who is a Mac user. I do not want him to have to download any additional software to open and extract it.

Can .zip files created using Windows XP Pro be opened and extracted on Mac without any additional software? Is the file specification the same in Mac as it is in Windows?

Best Answer

Yes.

The PKZIP format used by Windows is understood by OS X and has been this way since about 10.3. The tool used to extract the contents is called Archive Utility and it is installed by default with every OS X installation.

Your Mac-using friend can either double-click on the archive in Finder to extract it or he can right-click/control-click and select the 'Open' option from the list of actions.

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Use the -s switch on the zip command in terminal. So if your folder was called FolderName

zip -r -s 64 archive.zip FolderName/

64 is the size of the split (in this case 64Mb).

Use -s to set the split size and create a split archive.  
The size is  given  as  a  number  followed optionally  by  one  
of  k (kB), m (MB), g (GB), or t (TB) (the default is m). [1]

Use zipsplit to split a zip file in to multiple smaller zipfiles. Use the -n switch to set the size of the splits.

[1] http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/zip.1.html

Best Answer

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