Archives

Two tools, and the formats that stay out

Create ZIP puts many files into one, which is the simplest way to send someone thirty of them without attaching each one. Extract ZIP does the opposite: it opens the archive, shows you what is inside and lets you download only the files you need. On a computer where you cannot install anything — an office machine, a library one — it is often the only way to look inside an archive at all.

The limits are sharp, and better known in advance. This works on ZIP files: RAR, 7z, TAR and TAR.GZ do not open here. Password-protected archives are recognised as such, but the password cannot be removed. And the archive is opened whole in the browser’s memory, so the limit is not what it weighs closed but what it becomes once extracted: a small ZIP full of enormous files is the case that may not make it.