Compressing files is a common task. For saving time, you can use PowerShell to automate the compression process. In this blog post I will show you how to compress multiple folders at once with the PowerShell Cmdlet Compress-Archive. The compressed zip files will be stored separately in a specific file. Let’s dive in.
Compressing multiple Folders and Files
In my example I want to compress all subfolders in C:\temp.
Running the script below leads to the follwing result.
Here is the code to capture and compress the subfolders and the files they contain. The ZIP files will be saved in the specified location.
Open PowerShell ISE or Visual Studio Code and copy the lines below to a new file.
Note: You need to edit line 6 and 9 according to your requirements. These lines contain the source folder and the target folder for the zip files.
<# This script uses Compress archives (ZIP) to compress multiple (sub)folders
and saves them individually in separate zip files.
#>
# Specify source folder
$source = 'C:\temp'
# Specify zip file location folder (destination folder, make sure it exists)
$destination = 'C:\ZipFiles'
# Action
$subfolders = Get-ChildItem $source -Directory -Recurse
foreach ($s in $subfolders) {
$folderpath = $s.FullName
$foldername = $s.Name
Compress-Archive `
-Path $folderpath `
-DestinationPath $destination\$foldername
}
Now go for it!
See you next time with PowerShell!
Categories: PowerShell, Windows 10, Windows Server
My name is Patrick Gruenauer. From Austria.
SID-500.COM 
Script is working fine but its changing Modified Date of the folders.
LikeLike
Is there a way to treat the zip file as the folder?
from:
root folder
subfolder1
content1
subfolder2
content2
to:
root folder
zipfile1
content1
zipfile2
content2
LikeLike
Hi, this script is interesting , Can you help me please, what is the sintax for Compressing Multiples Archives into multiples archives.zip
LikeLike
Can you show how to compress folders only. the folders can have multiple sub folders or files
Thank you
LikeLike
Hi,
First of all thank you very much for sharing knowledge 🙂
I would like to delete the folders after compressing, is it possible?
LikeLike
Hi, just use remove-item to delete them.
LikeLike
Hi,
First of all thank you very much for sharing knowledge 🙂
I would like to delete the folders after compressing, is it possible?
LikeLike