Is there a way to download folders without compression (not zipped)?

Hi ,

Thanks for your post! Yes this is expected behavior when downloading a folder no matter how small or large it is; there is not a way to change this behavior from your Box account.

Have you tried downloading the individual files, which will not zip and compress? That should be a lot faster experience.

Let the community know what you think!

Yes, the zip strategy works. As noted, it uses time and effort that should be avoidable.

Preferable would be a simple drag and copy: display the box folders in a window that mimics Windows Explorer. I could then drag and drop between the Box folder(s) and any location I choose on my computer. No zipping needed.

Alternatively, make it simple to assign a local drive letter to the Box master folder. Then it would be simple to use the command window: If the Box folder were X locally, then Copy X:\FolderName c:\ . In Windows, XCopy offers more options.

Thanks.

I just got done asking a support rep why Box ignores empty folders in a full folder/subfolder tree in a resulting zip archive and got the same reply.

"Expected behavior" seems to be an excuse for taking any sort of feedback and not turning it into actionable UX improvement.

Someone over there really ought to evaluate whether something is a bug or a feature. Seems like there's very little accountability for the difficulties people encounter with this platform's limitations.

Hi ,

Welcome to the Box Community and thanks for your first post in the forum!

Box does not download empty folders because of how Box handles folder downloads. Because of Box zipping up the folders during the download, it doesn't let the empty folders to be included in the .zip file, and as mentioned by @Howard, there is not a way to change this behavior.

As a workaround, you can place a blank document in every empty sub-folder that needs to be downloaded.

Thanks for your question, and thanks for using Box!

Be sure to read our guidelines, Subscribe to content you like, and complete your profile on the community.

Yeah. I wasnt asking for an explanation of how Box handles folders, honestly. I was pointing out that its not good UX, and rather than techsplaining it to users, you might want to change the platforms handling of this. As I was telling the rep that was helping me, there are other platforms that handle this as a native file system would, and rather than uploading a document to every folder in a folder tree, perhaps the solution is to switch providers.

Further, I might suggest, respectfully, rather than just pointing out the obvious misses, you might take the suggestion to the dev team to consider for a better user experience.

After I downloaded the folder in zip, I unzipped it, but the Chinese characters in the file titles become wired symbols. However, after I downloaded the individual files, the Chinese characters in the file titles remain the same readable. Could someone help me with this issue for now? 

Hi , 

Welcome to the Box Community and thanks for your first post in the forum!

Do you encounter the same issue when you download zip folders from other sources and unzip those? I've seen some forums online that tackles on this behavior and it seems the behavior you described might be due to your type of OS or something to do with your computer settings (windows encoding settings).

Be sure to read our guidelines, Subscribe to content you like, and complete your profile on the community.

The question is how you can download something as individual files, without them being zipped. I am trying to download 500 files now, and I don't want them zipped. Any number of files downloaded at the same time (in a folder, or not) results in zip files.

How do I do this?