| Spanning means placing one file in several different locations. Spanning a file with WinZip allows you to save files larger than 1.38MB (which is what a floppy disk will hold) to several disks. This is very useful if you don't have access to a CD Writer. The steps are pretty straight forward, follow the example below and you'll be spanning files like a pro! The first step is to insert a blank floppy disk. Then choose the file you want to save to the floppy. Below, you'll see I chose an MP3 (a music file) that is slightly larger than 2MB. Right-click the file and scroll down the menu that pops up till you find WinZip, Click on "Add to Zip file". WinZip will open up with an options menu for you to choose where and how to save the Zip file. Click the "New" button. We're going to create a 'new' archive. Choose your A: Drive using the dropdown arrow to the right of "Save in:" Type a name for the file. Here, I simply called it MP3 zip. We're taken back to the setup menu. Here you can see that we're adding the MP3 file from my hard drive to a new archive on the floppy drive called MP3.zip. The "Action" we're performing is "Add file", "Compression" is normal, and we're setting "Multiple Disk Spanning" to automatic. Now click the "Add" button. WinZip will begin adding the new zip file to the floppy. Once the disk is full, WinZip will prompt you to insert the next disk. Make sure you place a checkmark in the box at the bottom of this window. We want only our file to be on the disk. If you're using a floppy that has some data on it, we want that data to be erased before our file is placed on the disk. When this disk is full, WinZip will prompt you for another disk. You'll receive these prompts until the file has been saved completely. Be sure to label each disk accordingly. The first disk is disk 1, etc.. You can see the progress on the bottom of the WinZip window in the background. Once it's finished, remove the last floppy, close WinZip, and save the set in a safe location. Congratulations, you've just learned how to span multiple floppies with a single large file! To recover the file later, simply pop in the #1 floppy of the set and open it. Follow the onscreen instructions and WinZip will do the rest!  ©luvbug Computing Solutions Center 2001, 2002, 2003 |