How to Send a Folder as a ZIP File by Email
By the UtilityNest team · · 5 min read
Your accountant asks for "everything for this year's return". You have a neat folder for it: receipts, statements, a spreadsheet, a few photos of invoices, all sorted into subfolders. You open Gmail, click the paperclip, select the folder, and... nothing. Email will only take files.
The answer is to pack the folder into a single ZIP file. The recipient gets one attachment, the file names and folder layout are kept, and they can open it with a double-click on any computer or phone.
The short version: on Windows 11, right-click the folder and choose Compress to > ZIP File. On Windows 10, Send to > Compressed (zipped) folder. On a Mac, right-click and choose Compress. Anywhere else, use Create ZIP in your browser and click Add a folder.
How to zip a folder on each device
Windows 11
Right-click the folder in File Explorer, choose Compress to, then ZIP File (on older builds it is Compress to ZIP file). A .zip with the same name appears next to it.
Windows 10
Right-click the folder and choose Send to > Compressed (zipped) folder.
Mac
Control-click the folder in Finder and choose Compress "Folder Name". You get Folder Name.zip beside it.
iPhone and iPad
In the Files app, touch and hold the folder and tap Compress. Share the ZIP from Files or attach it in Mail.
Android
It depends on your file manager. Samsung's My Files, for example, lets you select a folder, tap More and choose Compress. No such option? Use the browser method.
Zipping in your browser
Handy on a Chromebook, a locked-down work PC, or a phone without a compress option.
- Open Create ZIP and click Add a folder. All subfolders come along with the same structure. You can also drop in individual files.
- Name the ZIP, or keep the suggestion (the folder's name).
- Pick a level: Normal for documents and spreadsheets, No compression if it is mostly photos, videos or PDFs.
- Click Create, then Download. You see the original size, the ZIP size and how much was saved.
The ZIP is built on your own device, so tax papers and contracts are never uploaded. Files with the same name are renamed instead of overwritten, and each file keeps its modified date.
Will zipping make it smaller?
Only if the contents are compressible. ZIP removes repetition, so:
- Shrinks a lot: text, CSV, logs, code, uncompressed images like BMP and TIFF, WAV audio.
- Barely changes: JPG and PNG photos, MP4 video, MP3 audio and PDFs, which are already compressed.
- Office files: DOCX, XLSX and PPTX are ZIPs internally, so little to gain.
Create ZIP even warns you when most of your files are already compressed, so you are not left waiting for nothing.
A worked example: the 140 MB photo folder
The accountant also wants 40 phone photos of receipts: 140 MB. Zipped, that is still about 140 MB. Way over Gmail's 25 MB. Two ways out:
- Make the photos smaller first. Zip the folder, then run the ZIP through Compress Images in ZIP on Balanced (photos capped at 2048 pixels). For typical phone photos that often saves 60 to 80%, and every non-image file and folder stays exactly as it was. Receipts remain perfectly readable.
- Split into email-sized ZIPs. In ZIP Files Separately, choose Split into ZIP parts by size and enter 20 (leaving headroom under the 25 MB limit). You get several complete ZIPs, each opening on its own, ready for separate emails.
One 140 MB ZIP that no email service will accept.
A compressed ZIP of a few dozen MB, or a handful of ZIPs under 20 MB each that send without fuss.
Attachments grow by about a third when email encodes them, so a 22 MB ZIP can still bounce off a 25 MB limit. Splitting at 20 MB (or 15 MB for Outlook's 20 MB limit) keeps you safe.
Tidy up before you zip
- Delete drafts, duplicates and anything you did not mean to send.
- Rename files so they sort sensibly: dates like
2026-10-15or prefixes like01-,02-. - Give the ZIP a real name. "Archive.zip" is easy to lose in a Downloads folder.
- On a Mac, Finder's Compress can add a
__MACOSXfolder that Windows users will see. Harmless, just cluttered.
Blocked attachments
Email providers look inside ZIPs. Gmail blocks archives containing programs or scripts such as .exe, .bat, .msi or .js, and Outlook.com blocks many of the same. For those, share a cloud link instead.
Need a password on it?
The built-in Windows and Mac options do not add passwords, and Create ZIP does not yet either. The free 7-Zip on Windows can create an AES-256 encrypted ZIP, and Keka does the same on a Mac. Send the password by text message, not in the same email.
How the recipient opens it
On Windows: right-click, Extract All. On a Mac or iPhone: double-click or tap. On anything else, our Unzip tool opens it in a browser, password-protected ZIPs included.
Sending a link instead
Sometimes a link is simply the better option, especially for large photo or video folders. Gmail offers to send anything over 25 MB as a Google Drive link, Outlook.com does the same with OneDrive, and Apple Mail offers Mail Drop. Before you send, check the link's sharing setting so the recipient can actually open it without requesting access.
Quick answers
Can I attach a folder to Gmail directly?
No. Zip it first, or upload the folder to Google Drive and share a link.
ZIP or RAR for sending?
ZIP. Every major system opens it without extra software.