Native zip utility

[dabigmooish]

I was wondering if there is a native zip utilitiy in Windows 2003. I know that win2k doesn't have one but XP does. I'v been given an assignment at work to automate the compression of some files. On unix this is easy because it is done on a command line. Is there a way to do this on a windows system?

[degsy]

Compressed Folders is a part of 2003.
Send To>Compressed (Zipped) Folder

[dabigmooish]

Thanks degsy. That will help me compress the whole folder, do you know of a way to just compress that one file?

[degsy]

It's the same method. If you want to use the inbuilt filesystem file compression then goto the File/Folder properties>Advanced> where you can choose to have the contents compressed.

[z1p]

One thing to keep in mind is that zipping a file and saving a file in a compressed folder is different. Once you create a zipped file it is zipped until you unzip it. You can move and transfer it to wherever you want and it is still compressed. With compressed folders, the file format doesn't get changed, it is just saved on disk in a compressed form. If you move a file from a compressed folder to an uncompressed folder, it then gets saved on disk in an uncompressed form.

The nice thing with compressed folders is that you don't need to manually uncompress the files to open them in an application.

The down side to compressed folders is that some backup apps may have problems and it is near impossible to recover deleted files.

[dabigmooish]

Thanks everyone. We've decided to compress the whole folder based off of what z1p said.