Unable to Open Encrypted Zip File in Windows

Submitted by jernomer on Tue, 2007-05-29 17:02
in

Hi,

I sent a friend an encrypted document that I created with BetterZip, but he was unable to open (he is a Windows user, btw). The file was encrypted by using the 'Compatibility Mode' and the AES method.

He tried to open the zip file using both the OS and WinZip. He could see the document in the zip file but would get an 'unknown compression' error when trying to decrypt it.

I thought BetterZip was able to create encrypted zip files that could be opened by Windows users?

Any ideas how I might resolve this issue? Thanks.

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Submitted by Robert on Tue, 2007-05-29 17:32.

To open an AES-256 encrypted zip file on Windows your friend needs WinZip 10 or newer. Windows itself can't extract zip files with strong encryption. Alternatively, you could use 7-zip on Windows.

Submitted by jernomer on Wed, 2007-05-30 15:14.

Thanks for the reply, Robert.

My friend was using the most current version of WinZip, but no luck there. He was, however, able to open the encrypted file with 7-zip. Thanks for the help.

Submitted by Robert on Wed, 2007-05-30 16:34.

Hm, I'll check with the latest version of WinZip, maybe they changed something.