Upload fails for certain Mac files

[Charleswj39]

On my Mac I have many files that File Explorer sees as directories; examples are all my applications, Mellel (a word processor) and Tables (a spreadsheet). As far as my Mac is concerned, all these are files that can be copied or moved at will. Because File Explorer sees them as directories, it will not however upload them. I know that I could zip any files that I wanted to upload, before trying to upload them but can not zip them within File Explorer. Being a newbie perhaps I'm missing something. Is there an easy workaround?

[aquarius]

Hi Charleswj39 ,

I did not encounter the problem - I can upload the mellel ( .mellel )file to nas via the file explorer.
My Mac is Mac OS 10.9, and I use Safari browser to login into the NAS.

What is your browser? or if this file is big?

[Auberon2k]

I think it's more correct to say that Mac OSX treats a folder with the .app extension as a complete application package. Are you local to the NAS? Why not just copy it to the NAS using Finder? I was able to backup my "Install OS X Mavericks.app" to my NAS via Finder. I just checked it and confirmed what you are saying, it looks like a single file application package on my MBP but on the NAS via File Explorer it appears as a Folder.

[Charleswj39]

On the Mellel point, I have looked at my Mellel files. They do not all have the same extension (.mellel), my very old ones have .mell. And the Finder makes a difference too, calling the most recent files 'Mellel Zip Package Documents' and earlier ones plain 'Mellel Package Documents'.

File Explorer will upload the 'Mellel Zip Package Documents' but will not handle the 'Mellel Package Documents' as it seems them as directories; indeed it is possible to look inside them and find an 'Images' directory and a 'main.xml.gz' file (a GZip archive).

When local to my NAS, I agree that copying with the Finder (or similar) is the way to go. And there are, I believe, other ways of copying files from my computer (ShareTool, Slink etc.) when I'm away. So my point is rather more academic than it is practical.

[Auberon2k]

I think this is more a peculiarity of how OS X handles files/folders. On one hand it's nice to see the App and all its dependencies as a single unit in Finder, but this hides the reality that it is truly a directory structure and when interacting with a different OS/File system oddities occur. I never even thought to look into this from my MBP until you noted it, I just dragged and dropped the 6GB Mavericks .app to my NAS as backup, most of my OS X application backups are in .dmg which does show as a single file on the NAS fs.