How to Use Built-in File Compression in Windows PC

Windows OS has lots of useful features available which we are not aware of.

Likewise, file compression is one such built-in feature provided by Windows OS, which you can use, if you don’t have any other file compression tool available.

Actually, the Windows OS stores a compressed copy of our files on the disk, that consumes less space. However, when the user opens the file, it gets automatically decompressed to its default size.

So, users may not really see the file compression in Windows PC and use it manually either.

However, you can spot the compressed files that are stored in a folder having blue mark on it.

So, now here we will guide you to use the built-in file compression utility of the Windows OS.

How to compress a file using built-in file compression in Windows OS

To Compress a file on the Windows OS, follow the steps below:

Right-click on the file or folder which you want to compress;
Now, select “Properties” from the menu, you see.
File compression in windows, click properties
Under the Properties dialog box, Click on the “General tab”;
Now, click on the “Advanced” button. This will appear the Advanced Attributes dialog box;
File compression in windows, click on Advanced
You need to check the box with option “Compress Contents to Save Disk Space”.
File compression in windows, compress contents
And click on “OK”,
Next, click on the “OK” button again to confirm and exit the Properties dialog box.

Now, you can see the compressed file or folder with a blue arrow on top. However, you can still open or modify the file like before.

File compression in windows, compressed file

But now, it will take less disk space and even you can now share the compressed file easily to others.

How To Decompress the file

Now, to decompress the file,

You need to again perform the above steps, but remove the check mark that “Compress Contents to Save Disk Space”.

The file compression to yet a useful feature as it takes less disk space as well as makes sharing files easy. However, this should not be used as a permanent solution to free disk spaces always.

As Windows OS already stores the files and folder in a compressed format. So, further using more compression puts extra load on the system and does not help in improving the system performance. Thus, you use this feature for your seldom used files and store in compressed format.

But there are also various file compression tools available in the market, that gives various features to fully compress your large files and save some disk space. As mentioned above, these are also helpful while sharing or transferring large amount of data. Some of the file compression tools, also provides file encryption features, that lets you secure your files with passwords.

Some of the best file compression software of 2020 are: