Zipping files to email

I know in OS X Yosemite (and way back) you can Right Click on a doc or folder and select "Compress". I often want to compress something to attach to an email rather than using Dropbox. But using this feature does not compress very much. Example - I have a 2 MB file and Mac OS compressed it to 1.8. I also purchased WinZip app and it only compressed the 2 MB file to 1.7. So neither compresses very much. Am I doing something incorrect and / or is there another app that will compress much more?

What kind of files are you trying to compress? There are certain files such as JPG which are already in a somewhat compressed format and will not compress much or at all using WinZip or another compression program. On the other hand, text files and other files of simple format will compress 50% or even more.

A folder that contains pdf files. It shows as being 1.9 MB and OS X "Compress" only compressed it to 1.8.

See above my first reply. PDF files likewise do not compress very much or at all as they are already in a proprietary compressed format.

About the only thing that really compresses well are regular text files. Other formats might actually grow in size in which case you are using ZIPs simply as a way of collecting multiple files as opposed to actually saving on space.

Interestingly, email attachment size limits haven't grown with the file sizes that we want to share, so you might be better of using a different method to share files anyway..

One option is to shove a bunch of files on a Dropbox (or your favorite cloud storage service) folder and then share the link to the folder with your recipients. This has the flexibility of the recipient looking at the files directly on the site or only downloading the files they care about..

Thanks to everyone. I learn everyday. I am using Dropbox but it's extra steps. My guess is that a lot of people need to compress pdf's and jpg's and it sounds like the "Compress" on Mac OSX and WinZip are of not much value. And I agree that email providers are not growing their attachment capacities. I have a large capacity with my provider but many of my clients do not and emails with large files attached bounce back. It's frustrating because I do not know who can handle them and who cannot until they bounce. So I guess I'll have to get in to the Dropbox routine.

You may find that the storage amount allowed in Dropbox may not be adequate. I use both Dropbox and the free Microsoft "OneDrive". OneDrive gives you 15 GB of free storage with the only requirement is opening a free MS live account.

DropBox has a "pro" plan for $99 / year for 1 TB.