How do i open zipped compressed files from a floppy disk?

I dont know how it was compressed before being saved to floppy as it was done by someone in a previous workplace.

Some files open simply by following instructions, after having saved to my own hard drive, then opening them from a right click on the icon, but in the problem cases, icon does not appear, so i cannot click on it to open.

When I go to open A: all files on the disk appear on screen. And when I right click on each file and go to 'open with...' then select 'zipped (compressed)' this sometimes opens up another screen containing the documents within this zipped file that can be opened normally, but with what i am having trouble with, on some files it will not show anything on the screen.

I am viewing it through MS Excel on Windows XP.

The files contained on it will be Excel and Word documents. Letters and Spreadsheets.

I dont see why they would need a password to open them as none of the others do, and they are no more/less confidential than any of the others.

My advice would be, first to copy all the files from the floppy to some appropriate folder, say in My Documents (I find using Windows Explorer the easiest way to do this, as it shows the tree structure of the folders on you hard drive in the left pane, making it easy to copy folders from the A:\ drive by drag, drop). It also would help if you set Windows Explorer to show file extensions (tools, folder options, view tab, uncheck the box 'hide extensions for known file types. Then see what the file extensions are for the files you are having troubole with.