Zipped (compressed) files take up less storage space and can be transferred to other computers more quickly than uncompressed files. In Windows, you work with zipped files and folders in the same way that you work with uncompressed files and folders.

If your spreadsheet contains a pivot table, you can reduce the file size by not saving the pivot table source data cache with the file and instead having the data cache refresh when you open the spreadsheet.

If you want to compress the OS drive, select File Explorer from the taskbar, and in the left pane, select This PC. Right-click or tap and hold the OS drive (usually disk C), and then select Properties, and in the General tab, select Compress this drive to save disk space. Select Apply > OK.

Compress pictures in your presentation. Select a picture in your document. The Picture Format tab appears. On the Picture Format tab, in the Adjust group, select Compress Pictures. Under Compression options, do either of the following:

Compress your PowerPoint media files to improve playback performance and save disk space.

Make sure that Do not compress images in file is not selected. In the Default resolution list, select a resolution of 150ppi or lower. In most cases, you won't need the resolution to be higher than that.

Compress a file and send it in Outlook on the web or Outlook.com. When you compress, or zip, your file, it decreases its size, and it might decrease it enough to fit within the Outlook size limits for attachments. The following articles describe how to compress and extract files for different Windows operating systems.

There are several ways to send and receive a blocked file. You can save the file to the cloud and send a link to the file, use a file compression utility like WinZip, or even rename the file with another extension, then have your recipient change the name back to the original name after they receive the file.

Learn how to use Manage and Optimize Drives to keep your disk and data drives defragmented and at top performance in Windows.

Be aware that some .exe files are compressed by using the PKWare file-compression utility. To correctly download and to extract these .exe files, follow these steps: Locate the file that you want to download. If you are not sure which file to download, you can visit the Microsoft Download Center to help locate your file: