How Do I Make, and Find, a ZIP File Using Terminal?

Comments: One Response to “How Do I Make, and Find, a ZIP File Using Terminal?”

Gary Rosenzweig

4 years ago

The zip command is pretty straight-forward. You can always type this to see all of the help info and examples:

man zip

Using -e will encrypt the file. If that is what you want to do, then fine, but keep in mind it requires a password. That means it should prompt you, twice, for that encryption password.

First, to navigate to the location of the files, use the cd command. So type cd and then drag and drop the folder from the Finder and press return. For instance, to go to the Desktop, you end up with:

cd /Users/(your home folder name)/Desktop

Then, just use the zip command like this:

zip -er nameofzipfile.zip nameoffiletocompress.xxx

Then it will create the zip file in the same folder as the original.

If you want to zip multiple files, the easy way is to create a folder there, put the files in it, and do the same thing with the folder.

zip -er nameofzipfile.zip nameoffoldertocompress

I think what was happening to you before was that you were somewhere else, perhaps at the root level or home folder. Then you used the full path to the file to compress. This took the file from there, but create the zip file in your current location. Using pwd will show your current location in that case. But it makes more sense to just use cd to work in the location you are dealing with in the first place.