zipx file

ZIPX (.zipx) is a file extension for a WinZip compressed file. A Zipx file is basically a zip file but created using advanced compression methods, supported in the latest version of WinZip and also by other zip utilities. Because of these new compression methods introduced by WinZip, zipx are theoretically the smallest zip files up to date.

With the latest version of WinZip you will create .zipx files by default, but if you want you can still choose to create "Legacy Zip 2.0" compressed files that are more common and for which there are more utilities available.

ZIPX was introduced as a default compression method starting with WinZip 12 which was released in May 2009. To be more specific, the .zipx file is a .zip file that uses one of the following compression methods based on the content to be archived: PPMd, WavPack, LZMA, or bzip2. This results in a smaller size for the archive, since images will be compressed using an image compression algorithm, multimedia files will be compressed using a more adequate method and so on.

Since WinZip is the one that created .zipx, this new compression format, the best solution is to get a copy of WinZip and use it to open and extract the contents of the zipx file. To open/extract a zipx file:

• Download and install the latest version of WinZip
• Once you have WinZip installed open it and go to File->Open
• Browse to the location of the .zipx file and select it
• Once you can see the contents of the .zipx file click on Extract To and select a location where to unpack the .zipx file

Once WinZip is installed you can extract a zipx file by right-clicking it and selecting Extract To or Extract here. There are other programs that can open/extract zipx files, and probably most zip utilities will support this format very soon.

You can create .zipx files using WinZip or other zip utilities that support the .zipx format. To create a zipx file:

• Download and install the latest version of WinZip if you don't have it already
• Select the files that you want to archive and compress in a .zipx format
• Once they're selected right-click and choose Add to archive...
• This will let you choose a name and a location where to save the newly created .zipx file

Of course that you can use the classic wizard to create .zipx files with WinZip, simply go to File-New and follow the guide. There are other programs that can create zipx files, and probably most zip utilities will support this format very soon.

Since the .zipx file format is rather new, not many zip utilities support it, but more are adopting it and soon most likely all of them will support it. These are the programs that are compatible with the .zipx format (can create and extract from a .zipx file):

• WinZip 12 (Standard or Professional) or above
• PowerArchiver 2010 RC1
• StuffIt Deluxe® 2009 Mac (if you want to create/open zipx files on a Mac)
• StuffIt Deluxe® 2009 Windows (if you want to create/open zipx files on a Windows computer but with StuffIt instead of WinZIP)
• PowerArchiver 2010 also added recently support for ZIPX files (lzma, bz2, wavpack and ppmd), so if you already have it use PowerArchiver to open zipx files and extract their content
• if you're aware of other zip utilities that introduced support for zipx send an email to inf1@publish-articles.com

Since the ZIPX file format is rather newly introduced by WinZIP, there are few zip utilities supporting it (WinRAR doesn't support ZIPX yet, neither does 7Zip). Thus, if you happen to encounter a corrupt zipx file you cannot repair it since no zipx repair utilities are yet available, so the only option is to go back and repackage the files (if you still have them) and only after that re-create the zipx archive.