Can't unzip .zip files... (ERROR 2)

HI!
As AlanRom_said before. It's one of those problems with the Archive utility. Usually, in good unzipping applications, the app would see if the file is encrypted with a password and notify you and ask you the password, the finder version of the Archive Utility do a lame work on that. And, as it can't read the file, it just throw up the error you saw.

The solution AlanRom_ gave is good. But, if you don't have internet access (Oh, yes, it can happen.) or you don't want to download another program, OR YOU DONT WANT TO PAY 2,99! (It's a good program tough) you can unzip this encrypted files on the terminal:

1. Open terminal.
2. Navigate to the folder where your encrypted zip is (Or just cd drag and drop the enclosing folder to the terminal window).
3. Do the command unzip Mypasswordprotectedfile.zip (Or again, just drag and drop the file)
4. You'll be prompted for your zip password, enter it (You won't be able to see it) and press enter.
5. Enjoy your unzipped file.

Cheers!

Zigma,

This looks like it worked, but where did it put all of the extracted files? I opened Terminal, typed unzip, left a space, then dropped my .zip file and hit Enter. Terminal started "extracting" file after file. When it stopped, it just gave me another command prompt. I have no idea where to find the files or if they actually were extracted.

Amazing. I just came accross this same issue and I did a permissions repair on a recent fresh Mavericks install. Most errors that came up were from ibooks! However, this still didn't fix the issue for me.

I tried unzipping via terminal as suggested by FermilabMacUseand this worked.

Anyone know how to really fix this?

Update: I eventually found the files. They extracted under my user profile and were just sitting there among the other folders like Applications, Documents, Downloads, etc.

Question: I used to be able to unzip files with no problems. This just started all of a sudden about 6 months ago. No password protections, I'm just downloading my backed up pictures from One Drive to my desktop. Any ideas??

Don't know what to say as files that work on other computers and then copied to USB and then to your computer are corrupt. The problem must be on your computer.

Are you using any encryption system for the drive?

It's not a virus. See my Mac Malware Guide regarding that topic:

http://www.reedcorner.net/guides/macvirus

Something is probably causing those zip files to become corrupt, but what that might be is hard to say. I'd try repairing your hard drive with Disk Utility. (Hold down command-R at startup to repair the boot drive.) I'd also do some careful checking of your network connection to make sure that's not introducing errors in downloaded data.

I believe Thomas is correct. I had the same problem you did, having donwloaded something through a Starbuck's wireless access point. I switched wireless networks and re-downloaded and the file extracted properly. I think the original file was corrupt.

I have just had the same error. However if I use the "unzip" command downloaded via fink (meaning this is a command line commmand)

> /sw/bin/unzip file.zip

it works just fine.

The native version

> /usr/bin/unzip file.zip

also works (so you don't need fink).

BTW My file was encrypted if that makes any difference. I am running Lion 10.7.4.

Same problem here.

I solve it by reparing permission.

I was getting "Error 2", but when I switched to using command-line "unzip" command I just got a different error:

>> End-of-central-directory signature not found. Either this file is not

a zipfile, or it constitutes one disk of a multi-part archive. In the

latter case the central directory and zipfile comment will be found on

the last disk(s) of this archive.

... I did find a fix for this, though I don't understand it. I used the "jar xvf" command given as a solution here:

http://askubuntu.com/questions/54904/unzip-error-end-of-central-directory-signat ure-not-found

I found out that happen when the zip file was password protected.

the archive utility didn't prompt for a password and just gave out an error message.

Unable to expand "??????????????????" into "???????????????". (Error 2 - No such file or directory)"

I verified (to see what was the problem, though I could've just gone straight to repair) and repaired permissions using Disk Utility. Apparently, there was, in my case, some sort of massive permissions problem caused by iBooks, which was impeding other Apps I use for documents to function improperly. Luckily, after repairing permissions, the problem was solved. Hope this helps.

I had the same problem on a company's computer and I found this post which is very useful coz I recognize it's a drive's permission problems that caused this, not that the file was corrupted. Unfortunately I couldn't repair permission due to Company's Mac privileges, therefore I copied the file onto an external harddrive which I thought is a seperate drive and probably won't have those permission problems, and it worked too, unzipped nicely.

Hope it's helpful.