Using PKZip or WinZip from within Access

Using PKZip or WinZip from within Access

If you are sending files via email or saving files to a floppy disk, then you will probably want to ensure that the file is as small as possible. You can compress files using one of the zipping programs available, either WinZip or PKZip. If you want to automate these from Access, then you should get the command line version of either of these. In addition, you may find the following links useful when running in a MS-DOS window:

Shell and Wait - As the shell command in Access does not wait for the shelled process to finish, you will probably want to use some means of halting code execution until the process does finish, especially if you are expecting to use the file further on in your code.
Get Short and Long File Names - As you are working with Windows files in a MS-DOS environment, you will probably need to convert any Windows file names to their MS-DOS equivalents.

Below is a sample function, using WinZip to zip a file, utilising the functions described on the two links above:

Function fWinZip(strFile2Zip As String) As String
'   Procedure to Zip a file using command line version of WinZip
'   Accepts:
'       strFile2Zip - the name of the file that is zipped
'   Returns:
'       a string with the name of the zipped file
    On Error GoTo E_Handle
    Dim strWZipPath As String
    Dim strZippedFile As String
    Dim strZipCmd As String
    strWZipPath = "C:\Access Dev\wzzip.exe"
    strZippedFile = Left(strFile2Zip, InStr(strFile2Zip, ".")) & "zip"
    strZipCmd = " -a -ex "
    strWZipPath = fGetShortName(strWZipPath)
    strFile2Zip = fGetShortName(strFile2Zip)
    strZippedFile = fGetShortName(strZippedFile)
    ExecCmd strWZipPath & strZipCmd & strZippedFile & " " & strFile2Zip
    fWinZip = strZippedFile
fExit:
    On Error Resume Next
    Exit Function
E_Handle:
    MsgBox Err.Description & vbCrLf & "fWinZip", vbOKOnly + vbCritical, "Error: " & Err.Number
    Resume fExit
End Function

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Last modified at 06/06/2006 14:56:56