Unzipping All Those Digi Freebies

[bethrich]

So I decided to somewhat automate unzipping all my collected freebies. I wrote a truly geeky script.

The question to the rest of you Windows (not Mac) users ... do you unzip kits manually or do you have a method to do a whole bunch at once?

I'd like to determine if I should put a little more effort into my solution so that it can be shared with non-geeks. Right now it would be challenging for non-geeks.

[pbp908]

Ah, another reason why I love my Mac. It unzips automatically upon downloading.

If you find an easy way with Windows, let me know as I'll be needing it at work with the photo work that I do there.

[bethrich]

Pam, you're a geek -- you could handle my geek script.

[jfugina]

I found some freeware called "UnzipThemAll", and it's quite fantastic. It's a little buggy - like you have to click back and click into the current directory, to make absolutely certain that's the folder you're unzipping to, but otherwise, it's great. You just point it at a folder and tell it to go.

The part I have trouble with, is all of the sorting after that. I hate that many of the zip files have stuff stored like 3 folders deep before you ever get to anything. If I could unzip all of the files from one kit at a time and have all of the directories removed and have everything dumped into one bucket, that would be ideal for me. I don't like all of the directory crawling I have to do after I've unziped a kit. Especially since I move my stuff into Paper, Embellishments, and Quick Pages from whatever folders they're in. If templates are included, there will be a fourth folder.

I might be interested in your geek script though - I'm not much of a dos/shell scripter, so maybe even just a start would help me make some progress on my directory crawling wish....

[Sharonv]

What Pam said!! I love that my Mac does it for me

[bethrich]

Sharon, all I can say is lucky you.

Back to the agony of Windows!

Julie, I am in agreement that the post-unzip cleanup is a pain. I had quit messing with it because of the amount of work involved, but automating it is a good idea. I'll look at the ability to say that if the folder has nothing in it but another folder, pull everything up a level, repeat until it has shtuff in it. I'd hate to go beyond that assumption.

For total geekiness, this is PowerShell 2, so this should be doable.

[LadyJaine]

I don't download much stuff these days and I find it soothing to go through ans unzip and sort files. Huge piles of freebies? Never been my thing. But I'm with Julie on the multiple directories deep nonsense. And all the 'don't do illegal things' graphics, the fan blinkies, the links to other kits, the TOU files in three formats and so on. Hello? I don't need one in each and every directory in a kit. Really, I don't. I've seen complaints from folks with slow connections who download a 'free' file and then throw more than half of it away once it is unzipped. The other one that gives me a giggle is the Thumbs.db file. A lot of designers don't even know they are including it.

[bethrich]

Bumping this. Chris? Input?

[ChrisR]

Honestly, I stopped downloading/collecting digi stuff except for CS. Before Summer PSL I hadn't scrapped in over a year. I've never tried any fancy unzipping program. Just did one zip file at a time. I'll pick hubby's brain if he knows of anything.