How to merge spanned ZIP archives

So, you´ve just downloaded many small pieces of a big ZIP archive which has been spanned with the help of the free archiving tool IZArc and now want to know how to reassemble these pieces into the original big file, so you can actually use it.

First of all, you need IZArc. If you haven´t downloaded this tool yet, download it now (link above opens in a new browser window), install it on your computer and then continue with this lesson.

Again, I´m using my blogging tutorial as example, which can be downloaded either as one big file with approximately 44 MB or in 9 smaller files with a size of 5 MB each. In order to be able to merge these pieces (or the ones that you have downloaded from a different source), you must have them all in the same folder on your computer´s hard drive.

Open IZArc and select the option Merge Multi-Volume Set from the Tools menu.

This will open a new dialog window where you first need to select the last archive file of all these small pieces. It´s the one which has the .zip extension (all the other files should have the extension .z**, being ** a number). In this example, it´s the file blogtutorial-split.zip.

In the second field ("Converted archive name"), you enter any name you like for the merged archive, f.ex. blogtutorial.zip - Don´t forget the file extension .zip or your merged archive won´t work.

When you only enter a filename without a path, then the merged file will be created in the same folder where the single pieces are located. Of course, you can select a different folder if you want - simply press the browse button and choose a folder on your local drive where you want the merged file to be created.

Press the OK button to start the process. You will get a success alert message when it´s complete.

Now, with the original big archive in place, you can extract this zip archive and start working with its content.

The video shows you the whole process again.