How to Zip an Excel File (3 Easy Ways)

Method 1 – Using Windows Send Command to Zip an Excel File

Store your Excel file in a suitable location on your computer.

Select the Excel file and right-click on the mouse.
From the Context Menu, select the Send to command.
From the drop-down select the Compressed (zipped) folder option.

It will make a copy of the Excel file with the extension .zip.

Method 2 – Renaming File to Zip an Excel File

Select the Excel file.
Go to the Home tab in the File Explorer
Hover down to the Rename tab and click on it.

Replace the Excel extension with .zip and hit Enter.

A message box will appear. Choose Yes from the box.

As a result, your Excel file will be zipped.

Method 3 – Zipping an Excel File with VBA Code

Go to the Developer tab in the ribbon and click on the Visual Basic command.

In the Visual Basic tab, click on Insert.
Select the Module tab.
A coding module will appear.

Enter the following code and save the code.

Sub exceltoZipFile(ZipFolder As Variant, FileName As Variant)
'declaring an object
Dim shell_app As Object
'creating an empty zip file
Open FileName For Output As #1
Print #1, Chr$(80) & Chr$(75) & Chr$(5) & Chr$(6) & String(18, 0)
Close #1
'copying the excel file to the zip file
Set shell_app = CreateObject("Shell.Application")
shell_app.Namespace(FileName).CopyHere shell_app.Namespace(ZipFolder).items
End Sub

Sub zipped()
Call exceltoZipFile("D:\The Office\zip an excel file\", "D:\The Office\zippedfile.zip")
End Sub

VBA Code Breakdown

Sub exceltoZipFile(ZipFolder As Variant, FileName As Variant): we have named the function exceltoZipFile which has two arguments namely: ZipFolder and FileName, both are Variant
Dim shell_app As Object: we have declared a variable named shell_app which is an Object.
Open FileName For Output As #1 Print #1, Chr$(80) & Chr$(75) & Chr$(5) & Chr$(6) & String(18, 0) Close #1: we have created an empty zip file. The character in the middle line is an indication for Windows to create an empty file.
Set shell_app = CreateObject(“Shell.Application”)shell_app.Namespace(FileName).CopyHereshell_app.Namespace(ZipFolder).items : we have copied the files to the empty zip file that we have previously created.
Call exceltoZipFile(“D:\The Office\zip an excel file\”, “D:\The Office\zippedfile.zip”): we have called the exceltoZipfile function for execution.