Wherever you are, you need a tool that can unzip compressed files. ZIP files are, after all, the digital couriers of the web—second only to PDFs when it comes to sharing files.
On your desktop, you can easily unzip files manually and also have access to utilities like WinZip and 7-Zip. But what if the ZIP is on Google Drive?
Working With ZIP Files in the Cloud
At present, if someone shares a compressed ZIP file from a cloud folder, there's no way to unzip it without downloading it to your desktop. From your desktop, you can decompress the file and then work with the contents. But this is time-consuming and frustrating; especially if you then need to re-upload the contents back into Google Drive.
If this sounds all too familiar, then you should try an extension called ZIP Extractor.
ZIP Extractor is a Chrome extension that extracts files from a ZIP archive in Google Drive. This extension can be an invaluable time-saver if you do a lot of cloud work and want to bypass the inconvenience of unzipping.
Install the Chrome extension from the Chrome Web Store. Or open your Google Drive account > New > More > Connect more apps. Search for ZIP Extractor and install it.
Now, you can select any archived file in Google Drive for extraction. Select the file and right-click to Open with the ZIP Extractor for ZIP files stored in the Drive. On first use, the extension will ask you to authorize ZIP Extractor to access Google Drive. After that, the unzip operation takes a couple of steps:
- The ZIP Extractor screen gives you the option to select the files to extract. By default, all files are selected.
- Choose Extract Now to extract into a new folder inside the current folder. You can change the destination folder.
- The extracted file is saved in a folder with the same name as the ZIP file.
Use the ZIP Extractor interface to view the extracted file, share the file, or extract another file. Now, you can work with the extracted files in Google Drive. You should keep in mind that the decompression occurs in the cloud, so the speed of the process depends on your bandwidth.
Take Care of Unzip Operations in the Cloud
With the right know-how, learning to unzip compressed files is easy. ZIP Extractor is a simple but capable extension that extends the utility of your Drive. Yes, there are some small gaps—for instance, it does not directly give you the option to directly download the unzipped files to your desktop—but that's only a small itch.