Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Extracting to Destinations You Choose
You can add an entry to the right-click menu that will cause the unzipped
output to be placed on the desktop, regardless of preference changes you
made earlier. Another entry you can add will cause a file-browsing window
to appear, prompting for a destination where you'd like to unarchive the files.
To make either a reality, open System Preferences (Apple menu→System
Preferences), and then click the Keyboard icon. Click the Keyboard Shortcuts
tab, select Services in the list on the left, and scroll to the very bottom of the
list on the right, where you'll find two options that read Unarchive to Desktop
and Unarchive To. Put check marks in the boxes alongside both.
The change will take effect immediately. Whenever you right-click an archive
file, no matter where it is, clicking the Unarchive to Desktop option will unzip
the contents to your desktop. Clicking Unarchive To will open a file-browsing
dialog box, in which you can select a destination.
To remove the menu options later, repeat the previous steps, and simply
uncheck the entries in the list within System Preferences.
Create Password-Protected Zip Archives
Although OS X can unzip password-protected archives, it offers no way via
Finder to create them. However, you can create a simple Automator service
that does the trick. It makes use of the command-line
ZIP
tool, although you
won't be aware of this—after you type a password when prompted to, the
creation of the zip file will be automated. The action will appear as an option
in the menu that appears when you right-click a file or folder.
1.
Open Automator, which you'll find near the top of the Applications list
within Finder. In the Choose a File Type For Your Document dialog box,
select Service (the cog icon). If the Choose a File Type dialog box doesn't
appear, hit
COMMAND
+
N
.
2.
On the right of the program window, change the Service Receives Selected
drop-down list to Files or Folders, and change the second drop-down list
almost immediately alongside to Finder.
3.
In the search field in the middle top of the Automator program window,
type
R U N APPLESCRIPT
. This will filter the list beneath to just one entry. Drag
and drop it on the right of the program window, over the text Drag Actions
or Files Here to Build Your Workflow.
