[solved] corrupted Microsoft OneDrive ZIP files

I’m not sure if the problem also exists on Windows PCs, but at least on Mac and Linux devices, this seems to be a known problem. I had tried to download a large number of video files that I needed for editing via the OneDrive web interface. However, the downloaded zip file could not be opened with any program.

The problem seems to be the implementation of ZIP64 in Onedrive.

The Zip format initially had a 4 GB limit on the total size of the archive. This limitation was overcome with the ZIP64 standard (introduced in 2001).

In tests, I was able to download data smaller than 4 GB and then unpack it without any problems. Anything over 4 GB would generate the familiar error again.

the simple solution: only download data in individual packages that do not exceed a total size of 4 GB

There are also other solutions, for example to overwrite the relevant “total number of disks” field in the zip file. If you would like a deep dive on this, I recommend this article.

I hope this has helped you. If you have any updates or additions to the problem, please let me know.