Using Drag and Drop

The drag and drop interface is one of the most natural ways to use WinZip®. Using drag and drop, you can create, open, update, extract from, print, and e-mail archives--and more. Almost any drag and drop operation you can think of will work.

To drag and drop a file or folder, click it with your left mouse button, then, without releasing the button, drag it to the desired location and release the mouse button to drop it. Refer to your Windows help for more information if you haven't used drag and drop.

Creating a new Zip file

Drag one or more files or folders from My Computer or Windows Explorer to the WinZip desktop icon or an open WinZip window. Then, using the Explorer Add dialog, you can specify the name and location for your new Zip file.

Opening an archive

Drag an archive from My Computer or Windows Explorer and drop it on the WinZip desktop icon or an open WinZip window.
Remember, you can also double click the archive to open it, or right click it and choose Open with WinZip from the shortcut menu.

Adding files to an archive

To add files to an existing archive, select one or more files or folders in My Computer or Windows Explorer and drop them on any of the following:

an open WinZip window
the WinZip desktop icon
an archive shown in a My Computer or Windows Explorer window
an archive on the desktop
a shortcut to an archive

Extracting, viewing, and printing files in an archive

You can drag files from an archive open in a WinZip window to other applications, My Computer or Windows Explorer windows, the desktop, printers and shortcuts.

If you drop files on a folder listed in My Computer or Windows Explorer, the files are extracted to that folder.
If you drop files on the desktop, the files are extracted to the desktop.
If you drop files on a printer icon, the files are printed.
If you drop files on another application or on a shortcut to an application, the files are extracted to a temporary folder and passed to the application for handling. The files are removed from the temporary folder when the archive is closed.

Note: it's important to remember that different applications handle dropped files in different ways. For example, when you drop a file on the WordPad application distributed as part of Windows it will embed the file as an OLE object, but when you drop a file on the Notepad application distributed as part of Windows it will open the file. You may need to experiment with drag and drop to understand how each application reacts to files dropped on it.

Dropping an archive on another application

Sometime it can be useful to drag an entire archive from WinZip and drop it on an application. For example, you can drop an archive on an e-mail message to send it as an attachment, or on a Word document to embed it as an object.

To drop an open archive from WinZip to another application, click the WinZip status line, drag the mouse pointer to the application window, and release the mouse button.