How to Send a Whole Folder Without Losing Its Structure

Sending one file is easy. Sending a project folder, with its Assets, Exports and Old versions subfolders all in the right places, is where most tools quietly let you down. They take the files and drop the folders, and the person on the other end gets a heap of 400 files called things like final_v2.psd.

The reliable fix is old-fashioned: put the folder in a ZIP first.

Why ZIP works

A ZIP file remembers the full folder tree inside it. When the receiver extracts it, every subfolder comes back exactly where it was. It also turns hundreds of small files into one big one, which is easier to send and harder to half-receive.

Zipping on Windows

1. Right-click the folder in File Explorer.
2. Choose Compress to ZIP file (on Windows 10 it’s Send to → Compressed (zipped) folder).
3. A .zip with the same name appears next to it.

Windows’ built-in ZIP is fine for most things. It can get slow on huge folders (tens of gigabytes). In that case the free 7-Zip is much quicker. Right-click → 7-Zip → Add to archive, and set Compression level to Store if the contents are mostly photos or video.

Zipping on a Mac

1. Right-click (or Control-click) the folder in Finder.
2. Choose Compress “Folder name”.
3. You get Folder name.zip in the same place.

One Mac quirk: the ZIP may include hidden __MACOSX folders and .DS_Store files. They’re harmless, but Windows users will see them. If that bothers your recipient, they can delete them after extracting.

”Store” vs compress: which should you pick?

Compression only helps if the files can be compressed:

• Compresses well: documents, spreadsheets, code, plain text, uncompressed audio (WAV), some design files.
• Barely compresses at all: JPEG and HEIC photos, MP4/MOV video, MP3, PDFs, and anything that’s already a ZIP.

If the folder is mostly photos and video, compressing just burns time for a 1 to 2% saving. Choose Store (no compression) in 7-Zip, or accept that the built-in tools will spend a while on it.

Sending the ZIP

Once you have one file, send it like any other. With BoltShare, drop the ZIP in, share the link, and the receiver downloads it straight from your computer. There’s no size limit, so a 60 GB project archive is fine, as long as your computer stays awake until it’s done.

What if I select lots of files instead?

You can select many files at once in BoltShare, and they’ll arrive together in a single ZIP on the receiver’s end (we made that change recently). But because you picked individual files, the ZIP won’t recreate folders. Everything lands at the top level. For a quick bundle of photos that’s perfect. For a project with structure that matters, zip the folder yourself first.

Want it password-protected?

The built-in Windows and Mac tools can’t add a password. 7-Zip can. When creating the archive, enter a password under Encryption, choose AES-256, and (if you use the .7z format) tick Encrypt file names. Send the password through a different channel, such as a text message, not alongside the link. There’s more on this in what “encrypted” actually means.