Compress your files into single or multi-volume archives, create self-extracting archives and protect your archived data by encrypting and password protecting it. Decompress RAR, ZIP, ARJ and other types of archive formats.
WinRAR is an archive manager which lets you create, organize and manage your
archived files. With the help of this software, you can create archive files of your data, compress or decompress your files and protect your files from damages.
You can compress your files in RAR and ZIP formats only. But when it comes to decompression, the software can unpack CAB, ARJ, LZH, TAR, GZ and TAR.GZ, BZ2 and TAR.BZ2, ACE, UUE, JAR (Java Archive), ISO (ISO9660 - CD image), 7Z, XZ, Z (Unix compress) file formats along with RAR and ZIP formats. It can save data up to 8,589 billion gigabytes in size.
For beginners, the WinRAR features wizards for better understanding through basic questions. With a user-friendly interface, you can customise the theme of the software just by downloading it from its website. The experienced users can use the command line interface to perform various tasks. You can extract, test, comment, protect, encrypt, lock, scan, convert, or benchmark your archive files.
With the help of the inbuilt viewer, you can view the contents of your archived files and can also create a compression profile for the same. With recovery options, you can even retract your damaged archives.
WinRAR is, without any doubt, the best file compression software. It offers many advanced features for both new and old users. I recommend this software to anyone who is in need of a multi-purpose file compression utility.
v6.0.2900.2180 [Feb 17, 2012]
- "Ignore" and "Ignore All" options are added to read error prompt. "Ignore" allows to continue processing with already read file part only and "Ignore All" does it for all future read errors. For example, if you archive a file, which portion is locked by another process, and if "Ignore" is selected in read error prompt, only a part of file preceding the unreadable region will be saved into archive. It can help to avoid interrupting lengthy archiving operations, though be aware that files archived with "Ignore" are incomplete. If switch -y is specified, "Ignore" is applied to all files by default. Previously available "Retry" and "Quit" options are still present in read error prompt as well.
- Exit code 12 is returned in the command line mode in case of read errors. This code is returned for all options in the read error prompt, including a newly introduced "Ignore" option. Previously more common fatal error code 2 was returned for read errors.
- If several archives are selected, "Extract archives to" option group in "Options" page of extraction dialog can be used to place extracted files to specified destination folder, to separate subfolders in destination folder, to separate subfolders in archive folders and directly to archive folders. It replaces "Extract archives to subfolders" option and available only if multiple archives are selected.
- New -ad2 switch places extracted files directly to archive's own folder. Unlike -ad1, it does not create a separate subfolder for each unpacked archive.
- "Additional switches" option in "Options" page of archiving and extraction dialogs allows to specify WinRAR command line switches. It might be useful if there is no option in WinRAR graphical interface matching a switch. Use this feature only if you are familiar with WinRAR command line syntax and clearly understand what specified switches are intended for.
- Compression parameters in "Benchmark" command are changed to 32 MB dictionary and "Normal" method. They match RAR5 default mode and more suitable to estimate the typical performance of recent WinRAR versions than former 4 MB "Best" intended for RAR4 format. Latest "Benchmark" results cannot be compared with previous versions directly. New parameters set produces different values, likely lower because of eight times larger dictionary size.
- When unpacking a part of files from solid volume set, WinRAR attempts to skip volumes in the beginning and start extraction from volume closest to specified file and with reset solid statistics. By default WinRAR resets the solid statistics in the beginning of large enough solid volumes where possible. For such volumes extracting a part of files from the middle of volume set can be faster now. It does not affect performance when all archived files are unpacked.
- Previously WinRAR automatically resorted to extracting from first volume, when user started extraction from non-first volume and first volume was available. Now WinRAR does so only if all volumes between first and specified are also available.
- Warning is issued when closing WinRAR if one or more archived files had been modified by external apps, but failed to be saved back to archive, because an external app still locks them. Such warning includes the list of modified files and proposes to quit immediately and lose changes or return to WinRAR and close an editor app. Previous versions issued a similar warning while editing a file, but did not remind it again when quitting.
- "Move to Recycle Bin" option in "Delete archive" options group of extraction dialog places deleted archives to Recycle Bin instead of deleting them permanently.
- New "Clear history..." command in "Options" menu allows to remove names of recently opened archives in "File" menu and clear drop down lists with previously entered values in dialogs. For example, these values include archive names in archiving dialog and destination paths in extraction dialog.
- "File time" options in "Advanced" part of extraction dialog are now available for 7z archives. Additionally to modification time, WinRAR can set creation and last access time when unpacking such archives.
- ""New" submenu items" options group is added to "Settings/Integration/Context menu items..." dialog. You can use these options to remove "WinRAR archive" and "WinRAR ZIP archive" entries in "New" submenu of Windows context menu. New state of these option is applied only after you press "OK" both in "Context menu items" and its parent "Settings" dialog.
- <Max>, <Min> and <Hide> commands can be inserted before the program name in SFX "Setup" command to run a program in maximized, minimized or hidden window. For example: Setup=<Hide>setup.exe
