On just about every Linux and Unix system on the planet, the ZIP command is known by the name zip, and the basic syntax is zip. You can see I have a spreadsheet (financials.xls), a Word doc (readme.doc) and a plain text file FYEO (which stands for ‘for your eyes only’ if you’re stymied on that acronym). The ls command can show you the contents of the directory when you’re ready to proceed: Now’s the fun part use the cp command to copy all the files you want into that folder. In this case I’m making a directory called SecretFiles. First, check where you are in the file system with pwd then create the folder you want to send: On Linux, the fastest and easiest is probably to just use the command line, so here’s how that would progress. The basic approach is straightforward too: Create a folder, copy all the files you want to send into that folder, then launch the ZIP utility to create an archived version of that folder and its contents, all neatly packed into that encrypted, password protected file. Mac to Windows? Linux to Mac? All of that works just fine. This means, however, that you can create a ZIP archive – including one with password protection – on any of the major operating systems and share it with users on any other OS. Actually, it was designed by Phil Katz of PKWARE and Gary Conway of Infinity Design Concepts and introduced back in 1989, if you’re curious!Īt this point, every major operating system include a ZIP archive and unarchive or extraction application, though most are fairly crude or awkwardly designed as many basic utilities end up being.

While many operating systems have the ability to create encrypted files or folders and some email systems support secure file sharing, there’s a lot to recommend the Zip archive system, even if it’s over a hundred years old in Internet time.

Zip file with password mac