PowerShell Script To Zip / Compress Files And Folders

Powershell allows you to zip / compress files easily from the command line or from a script. You can specify the parameters by name if you like or you could just specify them by position.

Zipp all the files in your current directory like this:

Compress-Archive *  myArchive.zip

Compress a directory and everything in it like this

Compress-Archive testdir  myArchive.zip

Compress only the contents of a directory but not the directory itself like this:

Compress-Archive testdir\*  myArchive.zip

You can use a full path like this:

C:\test\test2\a\b\c\dir1

Or a relative path like this:

dir1

PowerShell Zip Files and Folders More Examples

Zip specific files:

Compress-Archive -LiteralPath c:\test\file1.txt c:\test\file2.txt, -DestinationPath myArchive.zip

Zip directory and contents:

Compress-Archive -LiteralPath dir1 -DestinationPath myArchive.zip

Zip the contents of a directory recursively but not the directory itself:

Compress-Archive -Path C:\dir1\subdir1\dir2\* -DestinationPath myArchive.zip

Only matching files:

Compress-Archive -Path C:\dir1\subdir1\dir2\*.jpg -DestinationPath C:\export\data\myArchive.zip

Update an existing archive:

Compress-Archive -Path C:\dir1\subdir1\dir2 -Update -DestinationPath C:\export\data\myArchive.zip

Unzip files with PowerShell

You can unzip files like this:

Expand-Archive .\myArchive.zip
Expand-Archive .\myArchive.zip dir1
Expand-Archive -LiteralPath myArchive.zip -DestinationPath dir1

Naming the parameters is optional.