The .zip file.
- Unpacked
- Every file inside is treated as its own source
- Split datasets
- Not recombined. Each member becomes its own table.
- Partitioned exports
- The folder path is discarded. Put the keys in the data.
- Encrypted archives
- Reported, never silently skipped
- Read here as
- Extracted, then each member on its own terms
- Status
- Ready
- Fidelity
- Data extracted
- Largest file
- 25 MB free, 250 MB once a project is bought
What it actually is
Unpacked, and each file inside is treated as though you had uploaded it yourself.
An archive is unpacked and each file inside is treated exactly as though you had uploaded it yourself. Formats that can be read are read; a member in a format that cannot be read, or one too large to unpack, is skipped without being listed anywhere you can see.
It is not a way to combine files. Twelve monthly CSVs arrive as twelve tables rather than as one table with a month column, and a partitioned Parquet directory arrives as one table per part with the folder path discarded. Anything that has to be one dataset has to be one file before it is zipped.
It is also not an audit of a folder you have not looked at. There is no contents list: what comes back is the tables from the members that could be read, and a member that was skipped leaves no trace in the result.
Worth knowing: Encrypted archives cannot be opened, and are reported rather than silently skipped.
Upload one
The analysis runs before there is anything to pay for.
You see what it found, and the evidence behind it, first.
No account needed to start. You only pay when you like what you see.
What goes wrong, and what is done about it
2 named failures, each with the repair.
Twelve files that are almost the same schema
Monthly exports drift. A column is added in March and renamed in August, and stacking them naively produces a table where the same measure occupies three columns, each mostly empty.
What is done: Nothing is stacked here, so the drift cannot corrupt a combined table, but nothing combines them either. Each member arrives as its own table, and reconciling twelve months into one is work to do before the upload.
A nested archive nobody expected
Exports that bundle their own attachments produce zips inside zips, and a shallow unpack finds a single unreadable file where the data was.
What is done: Nested archives are never opened. A zip inside a zip is skipped and nothing reports it, so unpack the inner archive yourself before zipping the outer one.
Questions people ask
About this format, not about the product.
Does the archive count as one file against my limit?
Yes, and that is the good news. The limit counts the files you upload rather than what comes out of them, so an archive holding twelve CSVs uses one of a free project's two slots instead of twelve.
What about a password-protected archive?
It cannot be opened, and you are told so directly rather than discovering the gap later in the findings. Nothing is guessed at, nothing is quietly dropped from the analysis, and everything else in the upload is still processed normally.
Can I send a folder of PDFs?
Yes. Each PDF is read on its own terms and nothing worked out on the first is carried to the second, so twelve reports cost twelve times what one does.
Keep reading
The jobs people do with this file, and the formats beside it.