Unzipping Password Protected Zip Files in OS X
In PC land, password protecting a zip file is fairly common. In OS X land, it’s not.
So what happens when you try to unzip a .ZIP file in OS X that has a password on it? OS X fires up its Archive utility and errors out with this:
(Error 1 – Operation not permitted)
Wonderful.
So what do you do?
Open up a Terminal session (it’s in the Utilities folder in Applications) and run this:
# /usr/bin/unzip [filename].zip
That will prompt you to enter a password and inflate its contents fine =)
I’ve also tested OS X compression apps: UnRARX and iArchiver.
On a side-note, Stuffit Expander will prompt for the password as well
December 17th, 2008 at 4:07 am
Thanks for this! The process for downloading the free version of StuffIt was ridiculous!
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Hey everyone. I’m hoping to meet new friends here so drop me a note when you
get a chance.
I hope to make some quality posts soon but first I have to look around the forum and
familiarize myself with everyone and the forum.
Bye for now. lol
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Biggest Loser of All Time
August 30th, 2010 at 12:01 pm
very useful thanks
December 15th, 2010 at 3:16 pm
in the terminal screen, I found it helpful to have a Finder window open to where the zip file is. Then after typing /usr/bin/unzip drag file from finder to the terminal after the space and it will put the whole path for you.
March 14th, 2011 at 11:34 pm
I tried from command line, but it never prompt to enter a password. Instead I got this err message: “Unsupported compression method 99″.
Any ideas ?
Thanks.
May 26th, 2011 at 3:40 am
Thanks for this tip, and thank you also to Pete for that tip. I’m sure it’s going to come in handy in many other cases too!