The presence of such diverse terms as, for example, "file extension", "archive" confuse some novice computer users. We will try to briefly consider all these concepts, as well as how to open a zip file.
Initial information
Before you open a zip file, you should first understand what it is. The word “zip” is exactly what is called a file extension, and in this case it means that the file is an archive.
An archive is a kind of storage in which a very large number of any other files or the same archives can be placed. In addition, most
the information placed in them is compressed, i.e. becomes smaller (but not necessary). Archives are also useful because they are easier and faster to send over the Internet or a local network, write to any media, etc., because the number of operations that a user should perform is reduced. Imagine how much you need to perform homogeneous actions if any site accepts files only in a single quantity, and you need to transfer a thousand!
The zip extension is not the only one of its kind. There are many other extensions corresponding to archives, such as the “7z” file. How to open this or that archive? Are there any programs to do this? Of course, they exist, and not one.
Several ways to open a zip file
The zip file is the most common extension among archives. Therefore, there are usually no difficulties with how to open the zip file, and this can be done in simple ways.
So, if one of any Windows operating systems is installed on your computer, then it will help in this. The thing is that this OS contains a preinstalled program that works only with this type of archives. To open the zip file, just click on it a couple of times with the mouse (left button), after which a window will appear in which the files placed in the archive will be displayed. However, if an unofficial assembly of the Windows OS is installed on your computer, then there may not be a standard program, then a third-party installation will be required.
One of such programs is WinRAR, which can be downloaded on the official resource or on any third-party (only this is not always safe). Installation is not a difficult task. Usually, after it ends, all archives in the system will automatically open through WinRAR, so questions about how to open a zip file should not arise: just double-click it and that’s it.
But what to do when there is not a single similar program at hand, and there is no time to download and install them? For this case, there is another good way to open a zip file: you can use the online archiver. The most popular is the program from Google, which can quickly extract all files from the archive and provide them to the user for download.
As you already understood, opening archives is not such a problem. But some of them support setting a password, without knowing which, it is unlikely to be able to extract files, no matter which program is used.