Hello. I'd like to speak with you today
about creating a compressed folder in

Windows 7. Before I do that, however, I'd
like to talk a little bit about

compression. First of all, as you know,
everything on the computer is

represented in bits. Everything is
reducible to zeros and ones -- and by

"everything," I mean text files. I mean
programs. I mean audio. I mean video. To

give you an example, Paint stores images
as bitmaps. Each canvas is made up of a

certain number of pixels across and down. Each pixel can be a single color. One pixel

can be red or it can be blue, but it
can't be partly red and partly blue. If

you're dealing with a monochrome image
such as we have here, you really only

have two choices: black or white. Two
choices can be represented by a single

bit; for example, zero might represent white, one might represent black. So in an

uncompressed format, ordinarily this
might be stored as lots and lots and

lots of zeros to represent all of this
white, still more zeros more zeros more

zeros, then three black or three -- we've
got three black pixels here, so we've got

three ones, a lot more zeros to represent
all this white. Five ones in a row to

represent this next line down -- five black
squares, lots and lots of white squares,

lots more zeros and so on. Imagine,
however if instead of having to store 00

000 -- a thousand zeros followed by a few
ones followed by a thousand more zeros

followed by maybe 25 ones, imagine
instead of having to take all those bits

for that, you had some special way of
saying repeat 0 a thousand times.That

special way of representing a thousand
zeros would take less space than

representing the series with a thousand
bits. This would be an example of a very

simple compression algorithm using this special repeating symbol. Now

in actual practice, the compression
algorithms are far more complex, but this

gives you a feel for how it might be
possible to represent the exact same

information in less space. Windows makes it possible to save files of various

types using less space with its built-in
compression. You can create a compressed

folder and then put files into it and
the files -- depending on what is in them --

may very well take up less space; it might be just a little less space, it might be a lot

less space. So for example this "Psych
notes" is nineteen thousand bytes, more or

less, of text. To create a compressed
folder, I could right-click on an empty

spot in this pane just as I would to
create a regular folder, and -- again, just

as with a regular folder -- I can go to "New," but if instead of choosing "Folder," I

choose "Compressed zipped folder," I will
create a compressed folder. I can then

give this compressed folder any name
that I like, such as "Notes" (because i'm

going to be putting my notes in here). I
click outside of that area to deselect

"Notes." I'm then going to right-drag and
drop my "Psych notes" on to my "Notes"

folder. By right-dragging rather than
dragging, I can choose whether I wish to

copy the "Psych notes" or to move them. "Copy" is bold, so that's the default. In

point of fact, I do wish to copy; I'm
going to choose "Copy" here. Now you'll

notice that I've got my original "Psych
notes" that is 19 kilobytes. My compressed

folder is 11 kilobytes; it's a lot
smaller. If I open up my compressed

folder, I can see a "Psych notes" listed in
here, and I can double click on the "Psych

notes." When I do that, you see that Word
opens in read-only mode; that's one of

the disadvantages of compression -- we
don't just compress everything that

we're working with partly because if we
want to make any sort of changes,

we're going to be having to
extract the file from our compressed

folder. We're going to have to decompress
the file -- restore to the original size --

make changes, and then we could put the
modified file back into a compressed

folder, if we wished. The other downside
of working with a compressed object is

that it's going to take a little bit
longer to do any sort of processing, but

if I do wish to extract this file again,
if I just want to open it I could choose

to open it here. If I come up to the
folder above my compressed folder so I

can see the compressed folder, I can
right-click on it and choose to "Extract

All." I'm going to be asked where would
you like to place the extracted file,

and by default it will be
placed in the same folder as the one that

contains the compressed folder. So I'll
leave the default here. I'm not going to

browse to any different location, and I
don't want to see the extracted files

when complete. I'll just say "Extract," and
now you'll see we have a new,

uncompressed folder called "Notes." The compressed one has an icon

that has a zipper on it; regular folders
do not have the zipper. If you are

showing your file types, compressed
folders have the file type or the

extension of "zip." Uncompressed ones
don't have any visible extension. So what

are the main points with creating a
compressed folder and using it? To create

it, you can right-click on a blank part
of the window-->New-->Compressed (zipped)

Folder. Give it whatever name you'd like.
Place in it anything that you'd like to

have compressed. When you wish to make use of the items. if you just want to see

the contents, you don't want to make any
changes, you're not doing anything all

that extensive, you can work with the
compressed version. If you do wish to

make changes, you do wish to do
extensive processing, you're going to be

needing to right-click on the folder and
choose "Extract All."

If you don't wish to extract everything,
another thing you could do is you could

come into the folder copy the item that
you wish to extract. If I had 10

different items in here and I only wished
to extract the "Psych notes," I could

right- click on psych notes and choose "Copy," go wherever I like to paste it,

right-click and choose "Paste." Now I already have a file of this name -- my original

file-- in here, so Windows has asked me
what do I want to do: Do I

really wish to replace the original with
a copy, do I wish to say "Don't copy," or

I'm going to copy but keep both files,

and in theory I should be seeing a
second copy in here. I'm not sure why I'm

not, but in theory I should be. Okay I'm
not sure why I hadn't been seeing the

second copy; I just refreshed the screen
and now you can see the second copy.

Thank you very much. Goodbye