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WinZip 10 can no longer follow shortcuts in Add dialogue.

8,435 Expert 8TB
Hi all.

Has anyone else noticed this? In the Add dialogue, WinZip no longer allows you to follow a shortcut. Instead it simply selects the shortcut file itself to add to the archive. This is extremely frustrating.

I have a particular archive which lives on a network drive, and each day I add to it some files from a local drive. I have a shortcut in the network folder, and until some time this year, I used to open the archive, hit the Add button, double-click the shortcut to jump to the local folder, and choose the files.

Now, since upgrading to version 10 (which is much better, in numerous ways) I have to type in the local path, because for the shortcut I only have two options. I can either add the shortcut file itself to the archive or I can open the shortcut, which opens the destination folder in a new Explorer window, outside of WinZip. Argh! Both useful options no doubt, but not what I want, and perhaps more importantly, not what I had. If there's one thing worse than missing functionality, it's lost functionality.

I've tried searching WinZip's website including FAQs, searching the web with Google... I even went as far as searching the ultimate authority on all things technical (thescripts:)) but without success.

I suppose the next step will be to contact the company, but thought I'd see whether anyone here could shed some light on it first.

Incidentally, I skipped a few versions to 10, so I don't know at what point this "de-enhancement" happened.
Dec 1 '06 #1
11 2771
bartonc
6,596 Expert 4TB
Sorry, I use 7zip and zip995 (which is worth the price at 2.995 USD).
Dec 1 '06 #2
Killer42
8,435 Expert 8TB
Sorry, I use 7zip and zip995 (which is worth the price at 2.995 USD).
I quite like Winzip, and consider it well worth the price (which I don't recall right now). I'd actually recommend it to anyone. I just have this one gripe.

I think WinZip is probably the only Windows archiving utility I've used, since converting over from ARJ, LHA and PKZIP.
Dec 1 '06 #3
Cyberdyne
627 Expert 512MB
This would be an excellent suggestion to the Winzip development team.

Sorry, I personally use Winrar

Good luck and let us know if you come up with a solution.

Cyberdyne.
Dec 2 '06 #4
Killer42
8,435 Expert 8TB
This would be an excellent suggestion to the Winzip development team.
Sorry, I personally use Winrar
Good luck and let us know if you come up with a solution.
Cyberdyne.
Oops! I wasn't quite truthful. I have also used WinRAR. Briefly.

I only downloaded it because I needed to open a RAR file. To be honest, I didn't like it much. However, I expect that was mainly just because it was different to what I was used to (probably WinZIP). This would have been some years ago.

I will let you know how it turns out. Leave the thread subscribed, it may be some time. :)
Dec 3 '06 #5
Killer42
8,435 Expert 8TB
Sorry, I use 7zip and zip995 (which is worth the price at 2.995 USD).
99 and a half cents?!
Dec 3 '06 #6
Killer42
8,435 Expert 8TB
...I will let you know how it turns out. Leave the thread subscribed, it may be some time. :)
For anyone who may be interested, I've finally contacted the company throught the support options on their website. Hope to hear from them via e-mail soon.
Jan 23 '07 #7
Cyberdyne
627 Expert 512MB
When I started reading this post I was like, hmm I have seen this somewhere before and of course I saw my own replies later heh. Well Lets see how long will it take them to reply, I am interested, although I still prefer WinRar (cheaper, faster and handles all types of files)

-=Cyberdyne=-
Jan 23 '07 #8
Killer42
8,435 Expert 8TB
When I started reading this post I was like, hmm I have seen this somewhere before and of course I saw my own replies later heh.
Yeah, gotta watch those dates. :)
Well Lets see how long will it take them to reply, I am interested, although I still prefer WinRar (cheaper, faster and handles all types of files)
I might download it again and have another look. But after using WinZip for years, and paying for it, I doubt I'll be switching any time soon.
Jan 23 '07 #9
Killer42
8,435 Expert 8TB
It doesn't look as though I posted the result here.

I did contact the company, and they got back to me. Basically, the behaviour changed a few version back (in fact I think V7 was the last one to behave the old way that I like), and isn't likely to change again soon. The problem, of course, is that they can either let you follow a shortcut, or select the shortcut file itself to be added to the archive - but not both.

Guess I just have to learn to live with it.


I'm quite looking forward to trying out version 11. At the moment I have different files that I need to zip using different compression methods to achieve the best size. Version 11 apparently examines the data (presumably tries compressing some of it it various ways, which will obviously increase the time a bit) and chooses the best method. This would save me a lot of hassles trying to remember which file is which, and re-zipping things when I got it wrong.

(These are typically 100MB+ files, and plenty of them. So a few percent difference in the ratio can be significant.)
Mar 15 '07 #10
Cyberdyne
627 Expert 512MB
Great, so what is the best compression you can achieve with a file size 100mb?
I still use rar but version 11 might be interesting since it uses intelligent compression techniques.

Cyber
Mar 16 '07 #11
Killer42
8,435 Expert 8TB
Great, so what is the best compression you can achieve with a file size 100mb?
I still use rar but version 11 might be interesting since it uses intelligent compression techniques.
Depends entirely on the contents. One series of files I zip at work typically compress by around 97-98%. When I see a 96% I know I used the wrong compression method.

If/when I try out V11 I'll unzip and re-zip some of these to see how it compares.

One odd thing I've come across in the past is particular files (containing rather strange, very repetitive data that I won’t go into here) which compressed OK (um... probably somewhere in the 80s or 90s) but then the zip file itself could be compressed by something like 99%. :) So a huge file would produce a ridiculously tiny archive, if you did a "two level" zip. This was one case where ARJ did a much better job. With extremely repetitious source data, ARJ seems to produce less overhead than ZIP.

Just for fun I once tried with a 2GB empty file (all nulls or spaces, I forget which) and ARJ produced something like a 1-2KB file, while the ZIP file was somewhere in the megabytes (forget how many). Once again though, the zip file was very poorly randomized and could be re-compressed quite a bit.
Mar 18 '07 #12

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