Why does Windows Explorer Show .zip Files as Folders ?

[Lamont Sanford]

My question applies to Windows Vista and Windows 2003 Server.

There's one aspect of Windows Explorer that's driving me absolutely nuts.
The left pane traditionally shows a hierarchical list of logical and
physical folders, letting the user drill down the folder tree by expanding
and collapsing the folder nodes. The problem is that if any of these folders
contains a .zip file, these files show up as *folder nodes* in the
hierarchy. I despise this. Since many of my archive folders contain nothing
but .zip files (and lots of them), and because folder nodes tend to
auto-expand when clicked, each click of a folder node generates this
enormous list of .zip files *in the folder pane.*

Is there any way to turn off this irritating behavior and force Windows
Explorer's left pane to do what it was originally designed to do, that is,
to simply show folders???

My only solution is to rename all of my zip files with a different file
extension but this would be a major problem for me. Any ideas?

Jules

 

[Richard Mueller [MVP]]

I don't know of any way to change this behavior. I find it annoying and
confusing. I often close what appears to be a zip folder, only to find I've
mistakenly closed Windows Explorer and have to start my task all over. It
also means when I view a normal folder it seems to have many sub folders,
when this is not true, it just has many files. Some people claim they get
used to this, but that's because they only use Vista. The rest of use that
use many computers are constantly confused by the inconsistent behavior.

 

[Lamont Sanford]

Hi Jules,

Look at the bottom post titled "How to Turn On or Off built-in Support
for ZIP Files in Vista" and do it. It will turn that feature off for
you.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/65254-zip-file-vista.html

Shawn

Nice! Thanks for the tip. Is it safe to run it on Win 2003 Server too?

 

[Synapse Syndrome]

Nice! Thanks for the tip. Is it safe to run it on Win 2003 Server too?

Yes. You can also install WinZip, WinRAR or the free 7-Zip, so that you can
still open the zip files, but without the Explorer integration.

ss.

 

[Robert Moir]

Yes. You can also install WinZip, WinRAR or the free 7-Zip, so that you
can still open the zip files, but without the Explorer integration.

Winrar is about the first thing installed onto all my servers after the OS
itself. Well maybe not the Mac servers.

 

[Ronnie Vernon MVP]

Lamont

Everyone likes doing the same things in different ways. I have enjoyed the
way Vista handles and displays zip files. It gives you are quick way to
identify zip files and view their contents without the need to open a third
party program.

 

[Synapse Syndrome]

Lamont,

I do not believe it will work in Windows 2003 Server. Vista was
completely redesigned for Zip file handling.

You'd be able to disable it in the same way you do for XP though. Just
installing WinRAR or WinZip is the easy way.

ss.

 

[DanS]

You'd be able to disable it in the same way you do for XP though.

Which is: regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll

 

[vidguide]

Lamont

Everyone likes doing the same things in different ways. I have enjoyed the
way Vista handles and displays zip files. It gives you are quick way to
identify zip files and view their contents without the need to open a third
party program.

--

Ronnie Vernon
Microsoft MVP
Windows Shell/User










- Show quoted text -

Microsoft call them "zip folders" for a reason I guess..

regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll
http://www.tweakxp.com/article37058.aspx

First google result for "disable zip folders"