Unable to extract data

USA
1

Since yesterday afternoon, I have been unable to extract newly requested data downloaded from IPUMS USA. When I try to extract it, the system hangs for a long time and then tells me the file name is too long. When I double-click on the .dat.gz file to find out what’s inside, instead of a single .dat file as usual, there are millions of little files each of which seems to represent an observation and whose names seem to be the data itself. (I.e., the file names are long strings of numbers.)

I can still extract files I previously requested as normal. This change literally occurred sometime in the early afternoon of January 7; I can extract a file I created the morning of January 7 but cannot extract a file created at 5pm January 7.

Anyone have any idea what is going on?

2

Thanks for your message. Something about Windows 11 seems to have caused occasional issues with decompressing .gz files with the built-in decompression tool; I recommend redownloading your file and trying to decompress with 7-zip. If after trying both of these steps you are still running into issues, please let us know and we can troubleshoot further.

3

Thanks for your response. I work in a closed environment but I asked around in my office and it turns out my office had already given us access to a third-party zip reader (Zip Reader by PKWARE) because of the Windows bug. That worked fine and I am now using the data. Thanks again!