End-of-central-directory signature not found
"End-of-central-directory signature not found" means the ZIP's final archive index is missing or unreadable. FileFix scans surviving local records, writes a fresh directory, and shows the recovered file list before checkout. A one-time $5 — and only if the repair works.
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Try another fileGood news — your file isn't damaged. No charge.
There's nothing to repair. If it still looks broken, the issue may be the player, codec, or viewer on your device rather than the file itself.
We couldn't recover this one.
The file is too damaged to rebuild, so there is nothing to preview and no charge.
Have another clip from the same device?
A healthy video recorded on the same device — ideally the same settings — gives the repair engine a template to rebuild from. It can unlock repairs that fail on their own.
Unrepaired files are kept encrypted for up to 30 days, then deleted.
FileFix can't fix that kind of file yet.
Right now we repair video, audio, document, and image files (MP4, MOV, M4V, MKV, AVI, TS, MTS, M2TS, MPG, MPEG, VOB, 3GP, WebM, FLV, M4A, WAV, MP3, AAC, FLAC, OGG, AIFF, XLSX, DOCX, PPTX, ODT, ZIP, PDF, AI, HEIC, and HEIF). We're adding support for more formats over time.
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FileFix can often repair this kind of damage if the file is recoverable.
Why this happens
ZIP readers normally locate the end-of-central-directory record near the archive tail and use it to find the central directory. A truncated download or copy can remove both while leaving earlier local file records intact.
The record is easy to picture: it is the last thing a ZIP writer puts at the end of the archive, a short block whose signature every reader searches for first. Because it sits at the very end, it is the first casualty of a truncated download, an interrupted copy, or a transfer that silently stopped early — the beginning of the file can be perfectly healthy while the closing record never arrived.
You can rule out the simple causes quickly: re-download the file, compare its size with the source's where shown, and try a second extractor. When every copy and every tool reports the same missing signature, the tail is genuinely gone from your copy of the file.
The missing signature is an index failure, not proof that every compressed member is gone. Members whose local headers and streams survived can be scanned without the old directory.
FileFix decompresses readable stored and DEFLATE members under safety limits and writes them into a new ZIP with a fresh central directory. The summary lists only the entries recovered from the upload.
What we can and can't recover
We can usually fix
- Archives that show "unexpected end of archive"
- Archives cut off during a download or copy
- ZIP files with a damaged central directory
- Archives that show the right size but won't open
We can't fix
- Encrypted archives
- Multi-part or split archives missing their other parts
- Genuinely empty (0-byte) files
- Files on physically damaged drives (that's hardware data recovery)
How it works
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Upload Drop the file in. It uploads over an encrypted connection. The repair runs automatically — no person looks at your file.
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Free Watermarked Preview You see exactly what we recovered — the list of files recovered from the archive.
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Pay & Download If the summary shows what you need, unlock the repaired ZIP archive for a one-time $5.
You see a recovery summary built from your actual file before you decide anything — so you never guess.
See what's recoverable.
Free recovery summary · private & auto-deleted
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Questions
The short block at the very end of a ZIP that tells a reader where the archive's index starts and how many entries it holds. Readers search for its signature first, which is why a missing one stops the whole archive from opening.
Almost always truncation: the download or copy ended before the archive's tail arrived. The record sits last in the file, so it is lost first — often together with part of the index, while the member data written earlier survives.
Not usefully. The record has to agree with the archive's actual contents — entry counts and offsets — so writing one blind produces an index that points at the wrong places. A rebuild goes the other way: it scans the surviving member records and writes a directory that matches them.
Yes, if the source is still available. A complete re-download is always preferable because repair cannot supply bytes that never arrived; use FileFix when a clean copy is not obtainable.