How and with what to open a .rar file?

Despite the fact that the .rar format has long been an integral part of Windows, Linux and many others operating systems, including MacOS and Android, for many, the automatic opening of the archive by double-clicking the mouse does not work.

Archives in Windows

By Windows default opens only 7zip archives, and opening .rar requires downloading an additional distribution.

WinRAR

This is the main application for working with .rar. Of all popular programs only this one can create archives on Windows, while the rest of the software can only open them.

If WinRAR is installed on the computer, then to create an archive file, on the desktop, just click right click click to open a menu prompting you to create a "WinRAR Archive".

And to open .rar, you just need to click on this file and it will be automatically opened in WinRAR, if this program, again, is installed on your computer. It also allows you to extract files from an archive. To do this, there is an "Extract" button on the top panel.

The features of WinRAR are:

• you can create an archive no larger than 8 GB;
• you can add a password, e-mail to the archive, split it into parts, block and
• perform many other manipulations;
• it is possible to fix archives that have been corrupted.

7-Zip

This program perfectly copes with the tasks of opening and unpacking archives in .rar format.

In addition to this format, it works with a huge number of other files - tar, gz, tb2, wim, 7z, but its main format is zip.

It is important to note that with 7-Zip and WinRAR installed, the user has the opportunity to create an archive in the 7-Zip interface, but WinRAR is still used.

Other features of 7-Zip:

• very high speed recording and unpacking;
• has its own 7z format, which, according to experts, is better than zip;
• the interface is very similar to WinRAR.

TUGZip

This program is not particularly known to many modern users. But it has a lot of "nice" features.

Among them are the following:

• there is an editor for self-extracting archives;
• the program supports multi-archive arrays;
• classic interface for archivers;
• automatic data integrity check.

TUGZip also supports great amount formats, even more than 7-Zip.

IZArc

The main feature of IZArc is that it works not only with archives, but also with disk images, that is, with files in iso format, mdf and so on.

Features of IZArc:

• the ability to convert archives to disk images and vice versa;
• more reliable methods encryption than previous programs(including AES);
• support for multi-volume and self-extracting archives.

In general, IZArc is a very good, reliable and free tool to open .rar files.

free arc

FreeArc is a completely free archiver with open source. Works with a large number of filters and compression algorithms - 11 in total. Judging by the performance tests, FreeArc is at least 2 times faster than any other modern archiver. Its great advantage is the ability to connect to Total Commander and FAR. Its other features are:

• it is possible to restore archives;
• automatic sorting by size, creation date or other parameters;
• ample opportunities for customization;
• automatic checking of the archive for integrity after recording.

PeaZip

Another free archiver, which is also a graphical shell for other archivers. It has its own unique archive format, .pea. Supports a huge number of formats, including 7z, tar, gzip, xz, ace, chm and many more. It also has its own testing algorithm.

Hamster Free ZIP Archiver

An interesting product from Hamster Studio. It has a very non-standard interface and support for a large number of archive formats (12 pieces) and files in general.

Has a set of special functions for working with email and disk images. Also supports Drag-n-Drop technology. Allows not only to open, but also to create archives.

Archives in Linux (Ubuntu)

Often, Linux distributions already have a software package specifically designed to open the .rar archive. This is a set free editors archives, without the usual graphical interface.

You can activate them via command line by typing:

sudo apt-get install unrar p7zip-rar

Now in file manager when you right-click on a rar archive and select "Extract here", the rar archive will be unpacked. You can also use unrar x [archive name] to unpack.

Often, if the archive was created in Windows, when you try to open it in Ubuntu, the encoding in the file names gets lost (it is believed that this is typical of the unrar-free and rar commands).

This editor does not allow you to view anything before unpacking, convert, and generally perform various operations without a terminal.

p7zip - this is exactly the same 7-Zip, only for Linux. p7zip has a full-fledged interface, classic for archivers. The developers are the ideologues of open source software, so all programs are free.

Here is one unverified advice from the forum: use the 7zip program for Windows in Ubuntu.

Opening an archive in MacOS

For this operating system, there are also UnRarX, 7zX versions and a paid RAR utility, which, in our opinion, is extremely inconvenient to use. All these are analogues of the above programs for other operating systems, and they work almost the same - with their own features of work, depending on the OS.

We would advise Apple users to use the UnRarX utility for MAC OS. Here she has a full GUI and is much more understandable to the average user. There is another interesting archiver called keka - a clone of p7zip and, accordingly, 7-Zip, with minor differences.

RAR in Android and iOS

On the mobile platforms archives, including those with the .rar extension, can be opened by almost all file managers. True, you need to install WinRAR along with them.

In most cases, all this is already installed on the phone and tablet at the moment when these devices fall into the hands of the user.

Accordingly, on a phone or tablet, you can also open, create or unpack an archive, and in some file managers all this happens as if the user were opening a regular folder.

So, if you have difficulty opening an archive on your phone, use one of the popular file managers for Android and iOS.

Programs to open .rar on Android:

ES File Explorer

One of the most popular file managers, which has perhaps the widest functionality of all - can give root rights, monitor memory usage, and more.

Total Commander

This file manager can somewhere 10 times more than ES File Explorer, but these features are available only to those who could understand its complex interface.

Amaze File Manager

Attracts many users with its google-like interface. Doesn't freeze.

.FX File Explorer

A file manager that works well in dual-window mode.

Programs for working with archives on iOS:

Documents 5 .

Provides many options for searching and working with files - moving, copying, adding to the archive and much more.

FileBrowser.

Perfectly copes with the task of connecting to a remote device.

USB DiskPro.

This file manager has many features for "advanced" users and file previews.

file manager.

The best option for those who use cloud storage.

Below you can clearly see how the .rar file is opened in Windows using WinRAR.

The most common problem that prevents users from opening this file is an incorrectly assigned program. To fix this in Windows OS, you need to right-click on the file, in context menu move the mouse over the "Open with" item, and select the "Choose a program ..." item from the drop-down menu. As a result, you will see a list installed programs on your computer and you can choose the one that suits you. We also recommend checking the box next to "Use this application for all RAR files".

Another problem that our users also encounter quite often is that the RAR file is corrupted. This situation can arise in many cases. For example: the file was not downloaded completely as a result server errors, the file was damaged initially, etc. To fix this problem, use one of the recommendations:

• Try to find desired file from another source on the Internet. You may be lucky to find a better version. Google search example: "File filetype:RAR" . Just replace the word "file" with the name you want;
• Ask to send you original file again, it may have been damaged in transit;

How to quickly open rar archives or why do you need an archiver?

We continue a series of articles on how to open files that cannot be opened. In the previous article, we looked at how you can open pdf files.

This article will discuss how to open a rar file in a couple of minutes

Files of this type are archives, or rather packed or compressed archives.

Why is this needed? This is mainly needed to reduce the file size or, which is a less common goal, to combine several files into one using an archive.

Here is an example, look, in the first picture, the file “400 topics in English.doc” not packed by the archiver has a size of 2.7 megabytes:

But now we will pack the same file with an archiver and see how its size changes:

As you can see, the file size has decreased by 5 times!

This is a very good way to save space by creating a compressed archive.

I will also add that you can reduce the size of the created archive even more, you just need to specify in initial setting a high degree compression.

But it's worth pointing out that not all file types compress so well.

Which files are good and which are not very compressible by creating an archive, you can determine empirically over time.

Okay, we have discussed the way to get the archive itself, but what are they created by?

They are very easy to create using a program called WinRAR.

The program is small and handy. And so, where can I download the Russian version of winrar for free? You can do this by typing "download winrar" in the search engine; better try to download either from the official site or from the famous and trusted one.

Scroll down until you find the installation language Russian, which 32 or 64 bit to choose, you can see about it in this article.

And if briefly at the expense of 32 or 64 bits, then you need to look at it on your computer like this:

By right-clicking on the "My Computer" icon on the desktop, information about your computer will appear, and it will say how many 32 or 64 bits your operating system has.

Click, the download window will appear:

Specify, for example, the desktop. Everyone has downloaded the installation file, now we run it to install the program itself:

Hello, friends! How to open rar file? The question occurs in all users with a more detailed development of the computer. On the Internet, almost all information that can be downloaded is presented in the form of archived files with extensions rar, zip and others. This is convenient because you can combine several files into one and compress for transfer or upload to the server. Users will have to open this archive (rar file) or, in other words, unzip it.

How to open rar file?

The file is opened simply using the WinRAR program. Download this program you can from the official website at

choosing your language from the list. When installing the program, you can not change the settings. For convenience, I put Nested Context Menus and in the field Associate WinRAR with: click Choose all because I want to ISO files also opened by default. Additional information about ISO-files (images) you can get in the article As a result, you will get one line in the context menu with a drop-down list of operations
After installing this program, you can already open files with the rar extension. For those who want to learn how to archive (create rar files) and use additional functions this wonderful program, read on. You can also watch the video at the end of the article, in which I show all these goodies.

How to create an archive (file) rar?

To create an archive, you need to call the context menu on a file or folder (you can select several objects using Shift key or ctrl. Select an item from the menu WinRAR > Add to archive…
Click OK, wait depending on the amount of archived data and the power of your computer, and get the archive. The rar file is ready. Let's take a closer look at some interesting features.

Compression method. The parameter responsible for how well or strongly your data will be compressed. When choosing maximum method the archive creation time will increase, but the archive will occupy the minimum space on .
You must choose a method for your needs.

Divider into volumes. This field allows you to split the archive (rar file) into parts of a certain size
It is possible to choose from the already installed ones. The program also remembers your entered separators, in my case it is 200 MB. In the adjacent drop-down list, it is possible to select the dimension, for convenience. If you need to open a rar file consisting of several parts, you must have all the parts in one place (folder). Otherwise, WinRAR will give an error and it will not be possible to open the rar file.

Archiving options (creating a rar file)

• Delete files after packing - an archive is created and the original files are deleted
• Create SFX archive - creates an archive with the extension exe which can be unpacked (opened) without any archivers by a simple launch. A great option if you are not sure if a person can open the archive you created
• Create a continuous archive. Allows you to compress your files more. The compression will be more significant than more files you archive and the smaller the average file size. When using this option, there may be problems with adding, deleting, and modifying files in the archive
• Add electronic signature- the author's name, time is added to the rar file latest update archive and its original name. This function only available for registered version of WinRAR
• Add recovery information - in case of damage to the archive (rar file), the probability of successful information extraction increases. The archive size will be slightly increased.
• Test files after packing - as I understand it, if there are problems when reading the resulting rar file after packing, WinRAR will display a warning
• Block archive - an option that allows you to exclude changes to the created rar file. When changing a document in the archive, the program will issue a warning

pressing Yes will display a diagnostic message

about the impossibility to change the locked archive. I also failed to delete files from the locked archive.

Go to tab Additionally. Clicking on the button Set password… in the window that opens, you can enter a password to open the rar file.
In this case, files can be deleted without any passwords. If you did delete the desired file in the article, you can read about how to try to restore them. These interesting functions are provided by the WinRAR archiver.

Also, files with the rar extension can be opened with the popular 7-zip archiver or the archiver built into Total Commander. In the case of 7-zip, you must also download the program and install it.

After installation, an item will appear in the context menu with drop-down options like WinRAR
Hope in question how to open rar file you don't have dark spots.

Video showing all of the above
If you use or know additional interesting features of WinRAR, 7-zip or use another program, please write in the comments.

Most users, when downloading something on the Internet, may have come across specific rar files. This type of information storage is called an archive and is used for compression, that is, reducing the volume without losing information. AT Windows distributions there are no pre-installed tools that can unpack an archive downloaded from the network. This article describes how you can open a zipped file or folder with the rar extension.

general information

Archiving, or data compression, is used to reduce the space occupied by information. However, a rar archive can also be used for other purposes: for example, it can be used to protect valuable information with a password, restricting access to it by unwanted persons.

Users also have the ability to split an archive into several parts, called volumes, thus writing large files onto many small storage media such as DVDs or flash drives.

There are many archiving formats, but rar is the most popular of them. This archive was developed by Evgeny Roshal, a Russian programmer. The name of the format is an abbreviation for the phrase "Roshal Archive" ("Roshal ARchiver").

The same developer created a special software, with which data can be placed in the archive and retrieved from it. Users can set various compression ratios, which will determine the output file size, as well as the time spent on packing and unpacking.

WinRAR

WinRAR is a version of the RAR utility created by Roshal, developed for Windows, as the name suggests. A whole team of developers is actively involved in the application, as a result of which it constantly increases its efficiency and speed of work, and also acquires many additional useful features, such as protecting a file with a password or working with other extensions.

The program is distributed under a paid shareware license, but users can use the application absolutely free for 40 days after downloading.

Download and install the application

Before you can open a rar file with this program, you need to download it: