Compressing Files and Folders

Introduction: In this video, we’re going to take a look at how we compress files on the Mac as well as why we would want to compress files on the Mac. Let’s go to my Mac.

Compressing Files: Let’s go and open up my Documents folder. I have a folder in there with some files that I want to compress. What I’m going to do is I’m going to go down to my Finder here. I click on it, and now we’re in my Home folder. Now, what I need to do is I need to go and open up Documents. I double-click on it. I have a folder in here called Compress.

Within this folder, I have several folders that I want to compress for various reasons. Let’s go ahead and double-click on this to see these folders. Double-click and we have an Enfold theme, which is a WordPress theme. I also have a backup of a site and then some Tulip Time files.

Show File Sizes to see how much space files are taking: The next thing we’re going to do is we’re going to show the file sizes of these because when we compress our files, what we’re doing is saving space. If we go over to the right here, you’re going to see sizes are not being shown. Usually, sizes are not shown when we’re looking at folders. If we go up to view in the menu bar, and then we go over to show view options, we have a new window that opens up, and one of our options here is to calculate all sizes. When I’m looking at my Compress folder, what it’s going to do is it’s going to calculate all the sizes when I click on this, including the folder sizes. I’m going to select this and then close it.

We can see we have my three folders here now, and then we can also see how much space they’re taking. Now, we’ll be able to see what happens when we compress them. Let’s take a look at our first one here, Enfold theme. Why would I want to compress this? Let’s say it’s taking up a lot of space. It’s taking up 123 megabytes. What I want to do is I want to compress this. I’m not using it. I just want to archive it. By compressing it, what we’re able to do is save space.

There are many files and folders on this site if we go over to our Drupal site. This is a website that’s backed up. I double-click on it, and you can see we have several different files and folders. If I wanted to send this to someone, there’s a good chance that it could become corrupt. Also, being that it’s not compressed, it’s going to be large again.

Let’s go ahead and click on the left arrow. You’re going to see I’m going to be sending a 38-megabyte file. I would like to compress my Drupal site here, so then send it as one file when I send it. It’s also going to save space.

My Tulip Time site here is also 7 megabytes. What I would like to do is I would like to compress that. Maybe I’m going to send these files to someone, so I need to compress it. The reason why we want to compress files is either to save space, maybe we’re going to archive something, or if you have a lot of files and folders and you’re going to send them to someone, what you want to do is you want to compress these into one file. That’s what happens when we compress files. It compresses whatever we select into one file.

Why compress files: When I go and select this Enfold theme, instead of being a folder, it’s going to be one file, a zip file. It’s going to be smaller in space. Then when I want to reopen it again, I just double-click on that zip file, and I’ll be able to see all the files and folders again. When I compress my Drupal site here or the Tulip Time site, I send those off to someone I send as one file, a zip file. They’re going to be smaller. There’s going to be less chance of corruption. Then when they receive the file, they’re going to get one file. They double-click on it, and they’re going to be able to see all of the different files and folders again.

What we’re doing is we’re just temporarily putting them into one file. It’s going to make a smaller file. Then we can reopen those at a later time. How do we do this?

Compressing a Folder or Files: The first thing we need to do is we need to select what we want to compress. We can select more than one file. I’m just going to go and select the Enfold theme first. I select it. I have the one file selected. Again, I could select more than one file here. Now what I’m going to do is I’m going to go up to file in the menu bar, and you’re going to see compress Enfold theme. When I select this, it’s going to compress this folder.

Let’s go ahead and select it. Now it is compressing it. Once it’s finished compressing, we’re going to see we have our Enfold theme, and it is one file. If we go over to the right, you’re going to see that it has taken nearly half as much space. Now, this folder, which has taken up 123 megabytes, I can do with it is I can throw it away and then just keep the compressed file, the zip file, which has only taken up 76 megabytes. Let’s just go and throw this away. I just click and drag, and now I am left with my one Enfold theme file, which has taken up a little more than half the space.

Opening a Compressed File: I want to see all the files again. I double-click on it, and now it’s opening up that zip file. We’re going to see; when it is finished, I have my Enfold theme folder again. When I open this up, let’s go ahead and click on it, I can see all the files and folders.

Let’s go and do that with the Drupal site. Now, what I do is I select it, and then I go up under file, and then we go over to compress. When I compress it, it’s going to compress all those files and folders into one file, a zip file. We can see my zip file here. Over on the right, you can see it went from 38 megabytes to 20 megabytes. Again, we’re saving about half as much space. If I were to send this to someone, instead of sending 38 megabytes, I’m only going to be sending 20 megabytes. When they receive that file, all they have to do is just double-click on it and open, even if they’re on a Windows computer. Windows does open up zip files. They just double-click on it, and it opens it up.

Let’s go over to my Tulip Time. Let’s say I wanted to send this to someone. Again, I have several files and folders in here. Let’s go ahead and click on it to see. Now, what I want to do is I want to send this. Instead of sending all these files and folders, all I have to do is just select it and, instead of going up to file, what I’m going to do is I’m going to use the secondary menu. I have a trackpad so I can just tap with two fingers, or what you can do is you can use the control key and click. When you do that, you get your secondary menu, and you have compress. I select it, and now it is compressing my Tulip Time.

If we look here, you’re going to see that the file size is smaller. Why is that? That’s because this folder here has several images in them. When you compress a folder with a lot of images in them, it doesn’t necessarily save a lot of space, so your results may vary. If you have a folder with a lot of images, you will not be saving that much space, but it still will be easier to send it because now you’re sending one file instead of a folder with a number of files. If you’re sending a folder that has a lot of text files in it, such as my website here, then you’re going to be saving quite a bit of space. Depending on what you’re sending, you’re going to have different results on how much space you’re going to be saving.

In addition to selecting a folder, what you can also do is select files. I’m going to go back over to my Documents here. Let’s say I wanted to select these four files here, and I want to compress them. Instead of sending four files, I just want to send one file. All I have to do is select them, so I’m just going to go and select them. I have to use the secondary click, which means I use two fingers and tap. Then I compress.

Or what I could do is I could go up to file and then go to compress. When I do that, what it’s going to do is it’s going to compress those four images into one file. We can do this with files as well as folders. Let’s go ahead and select it. It is now compressing them, and now we have archive. Now, what I can do is I can rename this. I’m just going to click one time. We’re just going to call this Images, and we have my images here. To open it up, what do I do? I double-click on it. Now, we can see we have an Images folder. Within this Images folder, we have my four images.

That’s how we compress as well as why we’d want to compress files on the Mac.