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If you've ever downloaded, well, anything through your web browser,

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you're probably familiar with the zip file, a compressed folder that often contains lots of other files in it.

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In Windows, a zip file will appear very similarly to any other folder.

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It'll just have a little zipper on the icon. Very cute.

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But have you ever noticed that if you try to open up a program directly from that zip folder,

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you'll get an error message which goes away only if you unzip the file first,

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but only sometimes. And then other times, you can just open up a zipped file without any extra baloney.

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Is there a method to this madness? To answer, it helps to understand why exactly the zip format is so common in the first place.

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Not only is it just fewer clicks to download one zip file instead of a bunch of individual ones,

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it also compresses the files so they take up less room on the server,

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use less network bandwidth, and take less time to download.

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Although these advantages have made the zip format popular,

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Windows can't directly interact with the data contained inside a zipped folder.

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And at first, this might seem confusing because you can just double-click a zip folder to open it,

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and there's the files, just like any other folder. But that functionality had to be added to Windows,

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and the operating system didn't even natively support extracting zip files in Windows Explorer

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until Windows ME came out in the year 2000.

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This is a major part of the reason that programs such as Winzip and Winrar were so popular during the 90s.

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They were necessary unless the compressed files that you needed to open came in something called a self-extracting archive.

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These had the decompression program built in so you would just download and run them,

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and they would spit out the uncompressed files automatically.

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But simply being able to open up and view a zip folder in File Explorer isn't the same thing as working with the files within.

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Whenever you double-click a file, like an EXE that's inside a zip folder,

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Windows actually unzips that file in the background without telling you.

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The whole process is invisible. Windows can't run the compressed version of the EXE,

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so the program is instead unzipped to a temporary folder and then it's run normally.

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But there's a way that you can actually see this happen for yourself.

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Next time you try to run an EXE directly from a zip folder,

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first open up a Run command using the Windows key and R,

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then type in this command to bring up your personal temporary folder.

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If you run the EXE now, you might be able to spot it in one of those subfolders.

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Now, the program might work fine if there aren't other files inside the zip that the program depends upon,

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but if there are, such as DLLs, you'll get an error message

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because the program can't access those files that it needs while they're still compressed inside the zip folder.

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That's why it's usually important to unzip or extract the entire contents of a folder

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before trying to do something like run an installer. And it's also why standalone files like images or text documents will typically work just fine

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without unzipping the entire folder first. An exception would be something like a text document that had images embedded in it

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that were also zipped in the folder. But not everyone likes waiting around for their zip folders to fully unzip,

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so if you're impatient like me, third-party tools like 7zip or Winrar do still exist

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and tend to be a little faster than Windows' built-in solution.

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Third-party solutions also usually offer better features than Windows' built-in compression support,

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especially if you're looking to create a compressed folder.

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They'll offer more efficient compression algorithms and stronger encryption for sensitive files.

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And don't worry, we won't tell on you if you never end up actually paying for Winrar.

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If you guys enjoyed this video, you can like or dislike depending on how you feel.

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If you really liked it, you can check out our video on how data compression works more generally

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and you can leave a comment if you have a suggestion for a future video. Just don't forget to subscribe so that you catch it.