WinZip configuration files (.wzconfig)

The purpose of this article is to explain how to create and load a WinZip configuration file specifically for adding and/or deleting email services used by the WinZip email feature. The possibility of setting up one particular email account will also be explored briefly. This information is complementary to the section of the knowledge base article concerning customizing your WinZip MSI entitled WinZip Email feature. If you have totally disabled the WinZip email feature, you will not need information about configuration files, but if you have limited your user's ability to edit the available email services and/or edit email accounts you may also want to change the default email configuration.

Creating .wzconfig files

WinZip automatically includes one configuration file the WinZip program files that installed. You may create and load your own configuration file in addition to this one. WinZip configuration files are in an XML format and should have a ".wzconfig" extension to the filename. The default email configuration file, 0100WZ.wzconfig, looks like this:

Here is an example configuration file that can be loaded after WinZip is installed. We will refer to this as the workmail.wzconfig file. This example sets the default email service to a fictitious "workmail.net" service. It also removes all 3 of the webmail services that WinZip includes by default.

With the 2 examples above, you may use the following table for reference:

Note: When remove="yes" is used in <mailservice>, all other values will be ignored and are, therefore, not needed.

Loading your .wzconfig file

Once you have created your configuration file with the necessary information, it must be loaded. To load your WinZip configuration file, you will need to first place it in the WinZip program folder and then a command will need to be run. Assuming the default install location for WinZip, you would want to change directories to C:\Program Files\WinZip. Then, the command with our example file would be:

winzip32 /loadconfig workmail.wzconfig
or: winzip64 /loadconfig workmail.wzconfig

If this is to be part of an install strategy for a number of users in your network, you may want to create a script, perhaps to use as a startup script. A batch file example follows below that could be used for such a script. This example "load_workmail.bat" file does the following:

1. Checks to see if the Windows version is 32-bit
2. Branches to use the correct WinZip version (64-bit or 32-bit)
3. Checks for the existence of the configuration file in the WinZip folder; if there it goes to the end to avoid loading the same file at each startup
4. Checks for the existence of winzip32.exe or winzip64.exe (WinZip's main file); if not there it goes to the end as WinZip has not yet been installed
5. Copies the configuration file into the WinZip folder
6. Loads the configuration file

Setting up a specific email account

The WinZip MSI file has no custom property for creating a default email account. It also is not possible to set up an account in a .wzconfig file. To set this up for users, you would first need to manually create an email account on a computer where you have installed WinZip. You can then export the necessary registry key, which you can edit if desired. The particular key that you should export is:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Nico Mak Computing\Common\Email\Accounts

If you have any questions about this information please email Technical Support.