Put several files into one ZIP

When you need this

The form takes one attachment and you have six documents. The email bounces because you attached eleven photographs separately. A colleague asks for "everything in one file". Zipping is the ordinary answer and phones make it oddly hard.

How to use it

1. Add every file. Any type, mixed together — documents, photographs, audio.
2. Give the ZIP a name that means something to whoever receives it. kwame-mensah-application.zip beats files.zip.
3. Save, and attach the one file.

What it does and does not do

• Everything is packed on your phone, so nothing is uploaded on the way.
• A ZIP is not much smaller. This is the part people expect wrongly. Photographs, PDFs, MP3s and videos are already compressed, so zipping them saves almost nothing. A ZIP is for tidiness and for getting past a one-attachment rule, not for getting under a size limit.
• If you need it smaller, shrink the parts first: make my PDF smaller and fit my photo under a size limit.
• No password can be set here. If the contents are sensitive, lock the documents themselves — put a password on my PDF — rather than relying on a ZIP password, which is weak anyway.

If something goes wrong

• Still too big to email. Most email limits are around 25MB. Use send a file that is too big, in parts, or shrink the contents first.
• The recipient cannot open it. Every computer and most phones open ZIPs without help. If they are stuck, point them at open a ZIP, RAR or CSV file, which needs nothing installed.
• The portal rejected the ZIP. Some only take PDF. Join documents with put my PDFs into one file instead.