.zip files are files which have been compressed.

Compressing a file squashes it, so it takes up less room.

We can’t view or edit a file while it’s compressed. We have to decompress it first.

Let’s see this in action.

This is the file we’re going to compress. It’s a perfectly ordinary Microsoft Word document.

On Windows 11, we can compress a file by right-clicking its icon and selecting “Compress to”, and then “ZIP file”.

We can do this with any file, from games to presentations to spreadsheets.