How do I compress a folder and later restore it?

Note: there are easier ways to do this, but this is the easiest to explain. In particular, using the drag and drop interface or the WinZip® menu entries in Windows Explorer's context menu can save you most of these steps. (The examples assume that we are compressing and restoring the folder C:\MYDIR.)

How to compress a folder and its subfolders:

1. Start WinZip.
2. Choose New Archive from the File menu or click the New button in the toolbar.
3. Type the name of the archive, for example:
    C:\MYDIR.ZIP
   and press the Enter key.
4. Choose Add from the Actions menu or click the Add button.
5. In the Add dialog, navigate to the folder you want to compress, or type its name
    C:\MYDIR
   and press the Enter key.
6. Be sure the Include subfolders box is checked and the Save full path info box is not checked.
7. Click the Add with wildcards button. (In Windows "wildcards" are the asterisk and question mark characters. These let you specify multiple files at once, for example,"*.Txt" refers to all files with a file type of "Txt".).

How to restore a folder and its subfolders:

1. Start WinZip and open the Zip file created in step 1 above.
2. Choose Extract from the Actions menu or click the Extract button.
3. Be sure the Use folder names checkbox is checked.
4. Navigate to the desired folder or type the folder's name
    C:\MYDIR
   and press the Enter key.
5. Click the Extract button.