Sending some Christmas photos via email brought some complaints from #1 son in Spokane. The picture came up in the body of the email but wouldn’t copy to his PC desktop. Some experimenting showed me the usefulness of the .zip file. The Mac Help category fom the main menu tells us why and how.
Compressed files take less disk space. This is handy for making backup copies of data or sending info on the internet. Select item or items you want to compress and choose File > Compress.
Or, control-click an item and choose Compress from the menu.
Or, in Finder window, select one or more items and choose Compress from the Action menu (it looks like a gear.)
If you compress a single item the compressed file has the name of original item with .zip extension. If you compress multiple items the compressed file is called Archive.zip
To uncompress the item: double-click the .zip file.