Quick start: extracting files in Explorer or Desktop

If you did not disable the "Integrate WinRAR into shell" option when installing WinRAR, it is possible to extract files directly in a Windows shell. Press the right mouse button on archive icon, select "Extract files…" command, enter the destination folder in the dialog box and click the "OK" button. This dialog box offers a few advanced options (see Extraction path and options dialog for more information).
You may also select the "Extract to " command to extract to the proposed folder name without additional requests or "Extract Here" to extract to the current folder.

Note that if option "Cascaded context menus" in Integration settings dialog is switched on, you need to open "WinRAR" submenu to access to described above commands. Otherwise they reside in the top level menu.
Another method is to drag one or several archives using the right mouse button and drop them to the destination folder and then select "Extract Here" in the menu which will appear.
From WinRAR 4.65 3.51 Copyright © 1993-2007 by Tamer Zorba

Quick start: extracting files from the command line

Common command line syntax to extract files with full paths:
WINRAR X [ -switches ] [ Files ] [ @File lists ] [ Destination folder\ ]
To extract files, ignoring paths:
WINRAR E [ -switches ] [ Files ] [ @File lists ] [ Destination folder\ ]
For example if you wish extract the file LETTER.TXT to the current folder from the archive LETTERS.RAR, use the following command:
WINRAR X LETTERS.RAR LETTER.TXT

Archive extension is optional and may be omitted.
The next command extracts all *.WAV files from the archive Songs to the folder Audio:
WINRAR X Songs *.WAV Audio\
It is also possible to list the files to be extracted in a file, rather than listing them on the command line. In this case the name of the file, containing the list of files to be archived, must be given on the command line. This is indicated by placing the symbol @ before this file name. Thus, if you create a file, Binaries, containing the strings *.exe and *.com, execute the command:

WINRAR X TOOLS @Binaries
all files with EXE and COM extensions from the archive TOOLS will be extracted to the current folder.
During the extraction process, a window containing statistics, will be displayed. If you wish to break the extraction process, click on the Cancel button in the command window. You may press the "Background" button in this window to minimize WinRAR to the tray. If extraction is completed, without problems, WinRAR will terminate, in the case of an error, a Diagnostic message window will be displayed.

See Command-line interface for detailed commands and switches description.
From WinRAR 4.65 3.51 Copyright © 1993-2007 by Tamer Zorba

Quick start: extracting files using WinRAR shell mode

In order to extract files using WinRAR shell mode you must first open the required archive in WinRAR. This may be achieved in one of several ways:

· double-click or press Enter on the archive name in Windows shell (Explorer or Desktop). If WinRAR was associated with archives during installation (the default installation option), an archive will be opened in WinRAR. You also may associate WinRAR with archives after installation using Integration settings dialog;
· double-click or press Enter on the archive name in WinRAR window;
· drag-and-drop an archive to the WinRAR icon or window. Before doing this ensure that WinRAR does not already display another archive, otherwise the dropped archive will be added to the currently displayed archive;

· run WinRAR from the command line with a single parameter - the archive name.

When an archive is opened in WinRAR, its contents are displayed. Select files and folders, which should be extracted. You may do this using Shift + arrow keys or Shift + left mouse button as in Windows Explorer and other Windows programs. Also in WinRAR it is possible to select files using Space or Ins keys. "Gray +" and "Gray -" keys on the numeric keypad allow the selection of groups of files using file masks.

Having selected one or more files, click the Extract To button at the top of the WinRAR window or press Alt+E , enter the destination folder in the dialog box and click on OK. This dialog box also offers a few advanced options (see Extraction path and options dialog for more information).

During the extraction process, a window will be displayed showing operation statistics. If you wish to break the extraction process, click on the Cancel button in the command window. You may press the "Background" button in this window to minimize WinRAR to the tray. If the extraction is completed without errors, WinRAR will return to the shell, in case of an error, a Diagnostic message window will be displayed.
From WinRAR 4.65 3.51 Copyright © 1993-2007 by Tamer Zorba

Acknowledgments

I want to thank Ron Dwight, who did so much for RAR and its users. It is so sad that Ron will never see next WinRAR versions.
WinRAR incorporates compression code by the Info-ZIP group, which is used with their permission to handle ZIP archives. The original InfoZIP source code is freely available from http://www.info-zip.org/pub/infozip/.
Text compression algorithm is based on Dmitry Shkarin PPMII public domain source code. You may find it in ftp://ftp.elf.stuba.sk/pub/pc/pack/.

WinRAR encryption includes parts of code from Szymon Stefanek and Brian Gladman AES implementations and Steve Reid SHA-1 source.
Some versions of WinRAR Win32 SFX modules were compressed using UPX executable file packer written by Markus F.X.J. Oberhumer and Laszlo Molnar. You may download UPX from http://upx.sourceforge.net.
DOS SFX module is built using DJ Delorie DJGPP C++ compiler (http://www.delorie.com/djgpp) and PMODE/DJ extender written by Thomas Pytel and Matthias Grimrath.

Useful hints provided by Alexander Khoroshev and Bulat Ziganshin allowed to significantly improve RAR compression and speed.
Francesco Indrio , designed most of WinRAR graphics.
The idea of WinRAR shell extension was inspired by Ylian Saint-Hilaire and his nice "RAR shell extension" program.

7z archives are decompressed using 7za.dll library. 7za.dll is a part of 7-zip archiver available on http://www.7-zip.org and distributed under LGPL license.
ACE archives are decompressed using unacev2.dll library, which is provided by developers of WinAce - http://www.winace.com.
Special thanks to Andrey Spasibozhko for help in development and promotion of early RAR versions.
From WinRAR 4.65 3.51 Copyright © 1993-2007 by Tamer Zorba

Console RAR version

Additionally to WinRAR you will find, in the distributive, the file rar.exe. It is also a 32-bit RAR version for Windows, but it supports only the command line, text mode interface. It is useful to call console RAR from BAT and CMD files, to use it at the DOS prompt and so on. It supports a larger number of command line switches and commands when compared with WinRAR. Though common aspects of the command line WinRAR syntax considered in Command line interface chapter are also true for console RAR, this help file does not contain descriptions of those switches and commands, which are supported only by the console version. You should read rar.txt file for a detailed description of all console RAR features.

From WinRAR 4.65 3.51 Copyright © 1993-2007 by Tamer Zorba

WinRAR limitations

The number of files, which can be added to an archive, depends upon the amount of available memory and the length of file names. Roughly 128 bytes of memory are required per archived file for RAR archive. For example, it can take about 128 MB to compress one million of files. WinRAR has been tested to handle over one million of files.
The size of a RAR archive, as well as the size of any single file within a RAR archive, is limited to 8,589,934,591 GB (9,223,372,036,854,775,807 bytes). Note that to create archives larger than 4 GB, you need to use NTFS, as older file systems do not support such large files.

The size of a ZIP archive, as well as the size of any single file within a ZIP archive, is limited to 2 GB.
In general RAR archive format is much better optimized for heavy tasks involving huge number of files and gigabytes of disk space.
From WinRAR 4.65 3.51 Copyright © 1993-2007 by Tamer Zorba

What is WinRAR

WinRAR is a 32-bit Windows version of the RAR archiver - a powerful tool which allows you to create, manage and control archive files. There are several versions of RAR, for a number of operating environments: Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, DOS, OS/2
, MacOS X.
There are two versions of RAR for Windows:

· Version with graphical user interface - WinRAR.exe;

· Command line console (text mode) version - Rar.exe.

WinRAR features

· Complete support of RAR and ZIP 2.0 archives;
· Highly sophisticated, original compression algorithm;
· Special algorithms optimized for text, audio, graphics, 32-bit and 64-bit Intel executables compression;
· Shell interface including drag-and-drop facility and wizard;
· Command line interface;
· Non RAR archives (7Z, ACE, ARJ, BZ2, CAB, GZ, ISO, JAR, LZH, TAR, UUE, Z) management;

· Solid archiving, which can raise compression ratio by 10% - 50% over more common methods, particularly when packing a large number of small, similar files;
· Multivolume archives;
· Creation of self-extracting archives (also multivolume) using the default or optional SFX modules;
· Recovering physically damaged archives;
· Recovery volumes allowing to reconstruct missing parts of multivolume archives.

· Unicode support in file names;
· Other service functions, such as encryption, archive comments, error logging, etc.
From WinRAR 4.65 3.51 Copyright © 1993-2007 by Tamer Zorba