Most compression tools and formats actually have multiple different compression schemes they can use although most of the time these choices are hidden and unnecessary. Zip has multiple variants, RAR has and so does .7z, if you look at the first webpage I linked to i.e. the .7z website you can see it lists at least seven different versions it can do. When you created a new test file and then successfully opened it you will have created it using a variant your tool understood, the problem here seems to be it has been created with a more esoteric or newer variant than the Mac tools you have tried understand.