Hello everyone nice to see you all. Every day most of us use any email service to send documents as attachment regarding our work but what we fail to understand is whether the documents we send regarding our work is not modified during transit or whether it reaches and gets read by the right person.
One option is to use encrypted email service like ‘protonmail’ or ‘tutanota’ but not everyone will be tech savvy and also it is not possible for the receiving party to open an email account as it may not be feasible for them to use.
So the best option would be to use a password for the documents we send as attachment but if those documents are not in pdf or word format instead it is a .jpeg image or a .txt text document then it is a tedious task to look for a program to encrypt and decrypt those files.
Luckily there is a free option available for this task and it is present in 7-zip application. All you have to do is put the different kind of files like image, word, pdf or text that you want to send inside a folder and archive it as a zip file using the 7-zip application with a password option.
To make it easy I have explained this process in a step by step approach using screenshot annotations as shown below.
 |
|
| Figure 1: Creating Files |
First create two text files namely ‘one’ and ‘two’
 |
| Figure 2: Content of file 1 |
 |
| Figure 3: Content of file 2 |
 |
| Figure 4: Open 7-zip application |
Now open the 7-zip archive manager by going to start menu as shown above or from any location that you have access to that application
 |
| Figure 5: Select the files for archiving |
 |
| Figure 6: Choose the archive type |
After that the ‘add to archive’ window opens in that choose the file type of the archive from the drop down menu of the ‘archive format’ section as highlighted, here we choose ‘zip’ as the file type for archiving our files as it is most commonly used.
 |
| Figure 7: Set the password |
Next proceed to the ‘encryption’ section on this window and choose a password that is long and strong but easy to remember once entering and re-entering is completed click ‘ok’
 |
| Figure 8: Extract the zip file to a location |
After that process head on to the location where your password protected zip file is and right click and select extract to the location where you want your files to be extracted.
 |
| Figure 9: File prompts for a password |
Before extraction the ‘enter password’ window prompts for a password input as shown above, enter the password you choose to encrypt the file in this field.
 |
| Figure 10: Enter the password for the zip file |
After entering the password click ok and the extraction phase begins
 |
| Figure 11: Extracted file contents after correct password entry |
Once done the extracted folder opens by default showing you the contents present inside the password protected zip file.
Thats it! You have successfully learned how to create a password protected zip file with various file contents of your choice. You can now send this password protected zip file as attachment to someone via email or by any digital medium safe and secure.
Before sending let the receiving end know what the password for this zip file is or else they won’t be able to open the file.
With this the article comes to an end hope you found this useful, will see you all again soon in another article that is useful and interesting. Thanks for reading!
My Blogs 