Creating an archive from a directory without the directory name being added to the archive

Question

I have the following folder structure:

• root
  • folder1
  • folder2
  • folder3
  • 7za.exe

I want to run the 7-zip command line tool to compress all the files in folder1 to a zip file called folder1.zip.

Running the following

7za.exe a -tzip folder1.zip folder1\\*.*

produces a zip file as expected. However, when I open the zip file, it has a folder in it called folder1, and inside that I have all the files that were inside that folder. I don't want the folder name added to the zip folder, i.e. I would like to add all the files in a "Flat" file format.

I also don't want to recursively run the command line tool for each individual file/folder.

Is there a switch that provides this functionality?

Answer 1

From the 7-Zip Help file:

a (Add) command

Adds files to archive.

Examples

7z a archive1.zip subdir\

adds all files and subfolders from folder subdir to archive archive1.zip. The filenames in archive will contain subdir\ prefix.

7z a archive2.zip .\subdir\*

adds all files and subfolders from folder subdir to archive archive2.zip. The filenames in archive will not contain subdir\ prefix.

cd /D c:\dir1\

7z a c:\archive3.zip dir2\dir3\

The filenames in archive c:\archive3.zip will contain dir2\dir3\ prefix, but they will not contain c:\dir1\ prefix.

So the command you'd want would be: 7za.exe a folder1.zip .\folder1\*

Also, pay attention to 7-Zip's handling of wildcards. It doesn't treat *.* as "all files" -- it means "all files with a period in the filename." Extension-less files will be missed. If you really want all files, just use * instead.

Finally, the -tzip parameter isn't needed if the archive filename ends in .zip. 7-Zip is smart enough to figure out which format you want in those cases. It's only required when you want a custom extension (e.g. 7za.exe a -tzip foo.xpi <files> for a Mozilla Add-on).

Answer 2

This worked for me

Consider folder structure like C:\Parent\SubFolders..... And you want to create parent.zip which will contain all files and folders C:\Parent without parent folder [i.e it will start from SubFolders.....]

cd /D "C:\Parent"

"7z.exe" a Parent.zip "*.*" -r

This will create Parent.zip in C:\Parent

Answer 3

Just to expand on the accepted answer (I was not able to add comment there):

On Linux adding '*' didn't work for me, so I ended up concocting more verbose command line which gave desired result:

curr_dir=$(pwd); \ 
cd source_code/lambda/ ; \
7z a ../../lambda.zip .; \
cd $curr_dir \
unset curr_dir

===========

script explanation:

• save current dir path to use later;
• navigate to directory which needs to be archived;
• create archive (notice '.' (dot) in the end);
• go back to the original dir;
• get rid of the variable which stored original dir path

I hope it might be useful for somebody.

Answer 4

How about this. e.g. Folder/subFolder1, Folder/subfolder2

select all subfolder > rightclick then create archive > select whatever format

*The archive name would be the parent folder..

Simple right?