Windows 10: Can't add a file to an existing ZIP folder.

I'm sure I've done this in the past, but it doesn't work now. I'm trying to drag a .pdf file to a ZIP folder. I get a circle with a \. Windows 10 and 11.See the picture for an example.

:)

 

Folders with zip files

I have like 30 or more folders and everyone of them has only one single zip file.
How can I extract all zip files inside of all folders?

 

Folders with zip files

just go to the root folder and do a search for all zip files, then select all and extract where you want.

 

Adding a pre-existing .ZIP file to another .ZIP file without fully extracting the existing .ZIP in Windows 10

Whenever I try to add an existing .ZIP as a single new content file to a new .ZIP Windows 10 acts like its insists on treating the existing .ZIP a a folder; fully extracting the existing .ZIP and individually adding each member of that .ZIP instead of adding just that one .ZIP file. How can I change this behavior on a one-time basis rather than permanently deleting the ability to treat a .ZIP as a folder?

I was creating a .ZIP file to upload debugging information for a complex Tech Support case. The new .ZIP was to contain 5 other files of varying content. One of the content files to be added was itself a 900MB .ZIP that had been auto-generated by one of the vendor's own debugging utilities and itself contained over 11,000 individual log, partial traces, settings, and other such content files .

Every time I tried to add the 900MB existing .ZIP to the new single .ZIP, Win10 insisted on fully extracting/exploding the .ZIP file being added to and attempting to display every individual content item in the existing .ZIP as it was being added. As you can imagine given the 11,000 file content of that one existing .ZIP, this went on and on and made verifying what was happening take a very long time with the actual content being a bit murky instead of just a listing of the names of the 5 content files.

I have WinZip, 7-Zip, etc. loaded on this machine as well as the default Win10 built-in .ZIP implementation. But regardless of which I tried using to create the new. ZIP I got the same behavior.

I know you're supposed to be able to delete an number of Registry keys involving CompressedFolders, SystemFileAssociations, ClassID declarations, etc. to get Win10 to treat all .ZIP files as a single file entity instead of as a folder.

But I don't want to permanently change the default behavior. I just want to change the behavior on a one-time basis instead of trying to delete several Registry keys, add one .ZIP file as content for a purpose like this, and then go back and re-enter or change every involved Registry key back and then have to test to make sure I didn't shaft anything during that sequence. Surely there's some special keystroke combo to NOT explode a .ZIP file I'm manipulating. If not, then there should be.

Thanks in advance!

-Bob