Open Downloaded TAR.GZ Files

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• Instructions for Mac
• Instructions for Windows

Overview

When you download results from a Project page of interest, CZ ID generates and compresses TAR files (extension "tar.gz"). After downloading generated TAR.GZ files, you need to decompress them to view and access data files for each sample selected for download. Below we briefly describe how to decompress or extract TAR.GZ files using Mac and Windows operating systems.

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Decompressing TAR.GZ Files Using Mac

To decompress TAR.GZ files in your Mac OS, simply double-click on the file of interest.

The files will be automatically extracted to a folder.

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Decompressing TAR.GZ Files Using Windows

If you are working on a Windows system, you can use a file archiver application, such as 7-zip, to extract TAR.GZ files. Alternatively, you can extract downloaded files from CZ ID through command line.

To extract files through the command line:

1) Copy the path to the downloaded file ("tar.gz" extension). You can do this by finding the file within your Downloads folder, right-clicking on the file, and selecting "Copy as path". This action will copy the file path to your clipboard. You will use the copied path during step 3 below.

2) Open a Command Prompt window. You can find the Command Prompt App by searching for "Command" using the File Explorer. Click on the App to open a command prompt window.

3) You will need the following "tar" command to extract the file:

tar -xvzf <download_path>

To decompress the downloaded file, type the "tar" command and paste the file path copied to the clipboard during step 1. For example:

tar -xvzf "C:\Users\UserX\Downloads\downloaded_file_tar.gz"

4) Run the "tar" command by pressing Enter. Decompressed files will be listed in the command prompt. Note that the list of files specifies the name of the newly decompressed folder. In the example below, we decompressed the "Reads(Non-host).tar.gz" download and files were extracted within the "medical_detectives_70" folder.

5) Navigate back to the Downloads folder where you will find the newly decompressed folder. You can access all of the results and/or data files by opening the folder.