Resolving 'Unexpected end of archive' error while unzipping archive

Zip archives are files that contains other compressed files. One major advantage of using archives is that they make it easy to club files and make transporting and copying the files faster. You can save disk space on your computer by compressing some important files (which are not used often) and decompressing them when required. However, these Zip files are highly prone to corruption in many scenarios. Many-a-times, a Zip file gets corrupt while you lose the Internet connection in the process of downloading. This gives rise to data loss situations as you cannot extract data or other files from a corrupt archive. You can resolve the problem by downloading the file again or acquiring a backup copy. But, if you still do not succeed in retrieving the files from an archive, better go for a professional Zip repair software.

Consider a scenario, wherein, you are trying to download files from an archive, containing highlights of a crucial business deal, from Microsoft SharePoint Server, and instead receive the following error:

"Unexpected end of archive "

As a result of the error, you are not able to view the contents of the Zip file, and thus remain ignorant about significant details related to a major deal. Your immediate priority would be to repair Zip file anyhow, but you must understand the causes behind the above error message.

Cause
The above error can be encountered in the following scenarios:

• You can receive the error message when the download starts and after downloading few megabytes, the process halts, although it shows a complete download.
• Or if the zip file is corrupt

Resolution
In order to troubleshoot the problem and repair Zip files, you can observe the following steps:

• Download the zip file again, you might get the whole archive
• If after repeated attempts you are not able to recover compressed files, then use third-party zip recovery software to fix corruption issues

Such tools employ improved scanning algorithms and recover data from a zip archive efficiently, irrespective of the reason behind corruption. But, make sure you download a read-only application from the Internet lest you end up inflicting further damage to the compressed files.