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Creating a Self-Extracting Zip File

To create a self-extracting Zip file from the currently open Zip file, click Self-Extracting EXE in the Tools tab.

Self-extracting Zip files have an extension of .EXE and can be run as commands. When a self-extracting Zip file is run, the files in the Zip file are automatically extracted. This is convenient because the end user does not need an unzip program (such as WinZip) to extract files from these self-extracting Zip files.

When working with a Zip file, this operation normally runs WinZip Self-Extractor Personal Edition, but you can also configure WinZip to use WinZip Self-Extractor. For details, see the section titled System Requirements.

Notes

If you are using WinZip Self-Extractor Personal Edition, you should be aware of certain restrictions. You cannot create self-extracting Zip files using WinZip Self-Extractor Personal Edition if the original Zip file

  • contains any files encrypted using AES encryption, or
  • contains any files that were compressed using the Enhanced Deflate, PPMd, bzip2, WavPack, LZMA, XZ, or Jpeg compression methods, or
  • has a .zipx file extension, or
  • uses the 64-bit Zip file format extensions. These extensions are used if there are more than 65,535 files in the Zip file or if the Zip file itself or any file contained in the Zip file exceeds 4GB in size.