Relative Path Warning (WinZip Jobs)

WinZip^® displays this warning message when four conditions are met:

1. You are editing an existing job, and
2. your job specifies relative folder information, and
3. your job specifies that the Zip file should be updated, not replaced, and
4. you have modified the list of files and folders.

The reason for the warning is that modifying the list of items to be zipped may change the base folder that WinZip will use, resulting in an inconsistent set of folders in the Zip file. (The base folder is the lowest level folder that all included files have in common; it is removed from the file specifications before they are stored in the Zip file.)

For example, suppose you previously specified that these two folders should be zipped:

  C:\Sales\East\January
  C:\Sales\East\February

The base folder here is C:\Sales\East, and the files would be stored in the Zip file with the relative folders January and February; that is, the file C:\Sales\East\January\Store7.xls would be stored as January\Store7.xls.

Now suppose you edit the list of items to add a new folder:

  C:\Sales\East\January
  C:\Sales\East\February
  C:\Sales\West\January

Now the base folder is no longer C:\Sales\East; it is just C:\Sales. The folder names East and West are stored in the Zip file, and the sample file above would be stored as East\January\Store7.xls. You now have two copies of Store7.xls and the following folder structure in your Zip file:

  January
  February
  East\January
  East\February
  West\January

Modifying the list of items is safe as long as you do not change the base folder. For example, if you were to add the folder C:\Sales\East\March to the original sample list above, the base folder would still be C:\Sales\East, and no problems would arise.

If, however, you do change the base folder, then you might want to consider archiving the original Zip file and deleting it from the target folder.