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BlueGene
Asked: 2009-06-04 07:57:09 +0800 CST

How to zip/unzip files in Powershell?

  • 772

Is there a one-liner that will zip/unzip files (*.zip) in PowerShell?

powershell command-line-interface compression

11 Answers

  1. This is how you can do it purely from Powershell without any external tools. This unzips a file called test.zip onto the current working directory:

    $shell_app=new-object -com shell.application
$filename = "test.zip"
$zip_file = $shell_app.namespace((Get-Location).Path + "\$filename")
$destination = $shell_app.namespace((Get-Location).Path)
$destination.Copyhere($zip_file.items())
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  2. Now in .NET Framework 4.5, there is a ZipFile class that you can use like this:

    [System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName('System.IO.Compression.FileSystem')
[System.IO.Compression.ZipFile]::ExtractToDirectory($sourceFile, $targetFolder)
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  3. Best Answer

    DotNetZip will allow you to do this from PowerShell. It is not a one-liner, but the library will allow you to write the PowerShell script you need.

    You can also use the COM interface, see Compress Files with Windows PowerShell then package a Windows Vista Sidebar Gadget.

    Googling "zip powershell" or "unzip powershell" might also turn up useful results.

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  4. I know this is a very old question, but I just saw it linked on Twitter on figured I'd post a current answer.

    PowerShell 5, currently available on Windows 10 or via the Windows Management Framework 5 Production Preview, comes with two built-in cmdlets for 'zipping' and 'unzipping':

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  5. You may wish to check out The PowerShell Community Extensions (PSCX) which has cmdlets specifically for this.

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  6. I find the simplest solution to just use infozip binaries which I have used for years and use in a UNIX environment.

    PS> zip -9r ../test.zip * 
PS> cd .. 
PS> unzip -t test.zip Archive:  test.zip
    testing: LinqRepository/          OK
    testing: LinqRepository/ApplicationService.cs   OK
    testing: LinqRepository/bin/      OK 
... 
No errors detected in compressed data of test.zip.

    It would be straighforward to put a powershell wrapper around the text output but in practice I never need that so I haven't bothered.

    http://www.info-zip.org/

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  7. I also like Info-ZIP (the Zip engine found in most other Zip utilities) and 7-Zip, another favorite which has both a GUI and command line Zip utility. The point being, there are some good command-line utilities that will work for most PowerShell tasks.

    There are some tricks to running command line utilities that were not built with PowerShell in mind:

    • Running an executable that starts with a number in the name, preface it with an Ampersand (&).

      &7zip.exe

    • Wrap each token, the utility is expecting to see from the command line, in quotes.

      &"c:\path with space\SomeCommand.exe" "/parameter2" "/parameter2" "parameter2's Value" "Value2 `" with a quote"

    Try this:

    zip filename.zip (Get-ChildItem somepath\*)

    Or even:

    zip filename.zip (Get-Content ListOfFiles.txt)
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  8. James Holwell I like your answer but I expanded it a little bit

    # Example
#unzip "myZip.zip" "C:\Users\me\Desktop" "c:\mylocation"
function unzip($fileName, $sourcePath, $destinationPath)
{
    $shell = new-object -com shell.application
    if (!(Test-Path "$sourcePath\$fileName"))
    {
        throw "$sourcePath\$fileName does not exist" 
    }
    New-Item -ItemType Directory -Force -Path $destinationPath -WarningAction SilentlyContinue
    $shell.namespace($destinationPath).copyhere($shell.namespace("$sourcePath\$fileName").items()) 
}
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  9. WinRAR can work in CMD mode accepting arguments

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  10. The ionic approach rocks:

    https://dotnetzip.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=PS-Examples

    supports passwords, other crypto methods, etc.

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