Most people use the WinRar program to open RAR files and Winzip to open Zip files. Many people, after downloading a ZIP file, open it by double clicking on it, opening the compressed folder before extracting the files with the Winzip program.
To open RAR files, the installation of the WinRar program is required.
WinRAR and WinZip are, in reality, paid programs that can be used for free only by agreeing to view messages from time to time to register or purchase the program.
As indicated in the article on how to compress and open files in zip archives, rar or others, without Winzip or WinRar there are definitely better free and open source alternatives including, the most recommended, is 7Zip .
READ ALSO: How to Zip (compress) a folder of files to be shared
After downloading 7-Zip, also available in Italian, you can install it quickly by always going ahead in the wizard.
7-Zip can be set as the default program to open any type of compressed archive: ZIP and RAR included.
7ZIP can also work very well to open ISO files and extract the contents of the ISO virtual CDs in a folder, without the need to mount them with other programs.
Depending on the security settings, it may be necessary to run the program as an administrator then, after installation, right-click on the link to 7-Zip File Manager in the Start menu and click on "Run as administrator".
From the program interface, go to " Tools -> Options " and, in the first tab called " System ", select all the extensions using the Select all button and apply.
The best function of 7-Zip is its integration in the contextual menu that appears by pressing the right mouse button on a Zip, Rar file or other types of archives.
In the 7-Zip tab you can activate this integration and you can choose which menu items to appear.
After applying, try pressing the right mouse button on a RAR file and note the 7-Zip entry to quickly extract the archive to a folder .
In the options you can set the Italian language if it is not already activated.
There are therefore two ways to use 7-zip: You can double click on a compressed Rar or Zip file to open the program itself and see what the archive contains, or you can extract the contents of the archive to a simple folder using the right mouse button menu.
Compressing files is just as simple and can always be done from the Windows context menu.
Simply select multiple files or folders, press the right button and then add them to a new archive which can be a Zip, 7z, Tar or Wim file .
The default is 7z, but if you intend to share the file on the internet or send it via Email, it is better to choose zip which is the standard extension of archives and which can be opened by Windows even without other programs.
The only limitation of 7-zip is that it cannot create RAR files even though it can extract and open them.
This is due to the licensing restrictions that protect the rar format.
With 7Zip it is also possible to:
- split a large file into small pieces with the Split into multiple files option.
- Encrypt and protect an archive with a practically inviolable password.
- Encrypt the file names to not let outsiders see the content.
- Add files to existing archives or update and synchronize them.
In conclusion, 7Zip is the best alternative to replace WinRAR, WinZip and also the Windows compression utility .
Its light interface and the fact that it is free software are features that should not be taken into consideration by everyone, experts and non-experts alike.
7-zip is also available for Linux and Mac.
In other articles on this topic you can read:
- How to find or remove passwords from protected ZIP and RAR files
- How to extract and recover damaged or corrupt ZIP and RAR files
- How to automatically extract Zip, Rar and other compressed archives
- Unzip and extract RAR and ZIP files online: best 6 web applications
