One month down in 2025: How are your resolutions coming along? Check out how to get back on track here.
Forum Discussion
Cannot open downloaded Zip due to "Unable to expand (file name).zip into Downloads (Error 2)
I am trying to download photos from my photographer's Dropbox account to my external hard drive. When I try to open the Zip (which shows size 7.53GB), I receive this error: "Unable to expand (file...
Hannah
Dropbox Staff
Dropbox StaffHey CKominiak, thanks for reaching out with this.
Is this zipped file saved as a zip on our website as well, or did you download a bunch of individual files, which were downloaded as zipped?
If they are individual files, do they preview correctly on our site?
And have you tried a different service to unzip them?
Keep me posted.
Is this zipped file saved as a zip on our website as well, or did you download a bunch of individual files, which were downloaded as zipped?
If they are individual files, do they preview correctly on our site?
And have you tried a different service to unzip them?
Keep me posted.
Hi Hannah,
I figured I would make easy for you to see exactly what is going on by creating a short ~1 min. video for you.
Please see the video here: https://www.loom.com/share/260a08c8e9eb4051ba4ad4ad9e755dc7
I should add that I have had no difficulty downloading the individual files (photos) when it's just one at a time; however, I need to download the entire file, which contains hundreds of photos. This is why I'm trying to download the entire file, which downloads as a zip file, but then I cannot open the zip file.
Thank you!
- Walter
Hey CKominiak - sorry to jump in here, but since the issue is with opening the zip file, could you try another unzipping/unarchiving utility/program than the one you originally used on your device and let us know how it goes?
OK, I finally found a resolution to this.
1. I downloaded the "iZip" application (free), installed it on my Mac, and was able to use it to open the Zip file and to retrieve the hundreds of files within it.
2. I had no issue using the built-in tool on MAC OS to unzip the other folder, which was substantially smaller in size.So perhaps the primary issue is that the MAC built-in tool for unzipping and opening files relates to the size of the zipped file. Using iZip solved that problem for me.
(*Note: Within iZip, I could not just move the files into another drive/folder on my Mac. I had to select all of the files by clicking on the top file, holding down shift, and then clicking on the last/bottom file. Then I was able to drop them into another folder, and that copied all of the files into the folder I wanted them to be in.)
I hope this info helps someone else. 🙂 Thanks!
