Creating, Opening and Finding Archives

Creating, Opening and Finding Archives

Creating a New Archive

General Information

For introductory information, please see the section entitled “Brief Tutorial - Creating a New Archive”.

There are several ways you can create New Archive:

From PowerArchiver window, clicking on “File> New” or “New” button on the toolbar.

Directly from Windows Explorer, using PowerArchiver's Explorer Shell Extensions.

Create a New Archive from Main PowerArchiver Window

To create a new archive, click on “New Archive” from the PowerArchiver's toolbar.

This activates the New Archive dialog box. Type the name of the archive that you want to create. This dialog box works much like the standard Windows Save dialog box. The names of any existing archives on the selected drive and folder will be listed to help you choose a name that is not already in use.

From the “Save as type” combo box, you can choose between these archive formats: ZIP, PA, 7-Zip, CAB, LHA (LHA), TAR, ISO, BH (BlakHole) or PowerArchiver Auto-Backup Script.

If you want to create a TAR.GZ or TAR.BZ2 archive, you must first choose TAR when creating a new file and later while selecting files to add, select “GZIPed TAR” or “BZIPed TAR” under compression methods.

What compression to use?

We definitely recommend using ZIP compression in most cases. It is quite fast and many users already have ZIP compatible programs that can open zip files. Newer Windows versions (WinME, Win2000, WinXP, Win2003, Vista, Windows 7/8/10 etc.) support ZIP and CAB compression out of the box, so if you send an ZIP or CAB file to someone, they will most likely be able to open it.

7-Zip format

We also recommend the use of the 7-Zip format, especially if you are compressing large files, since it has the best compression out of all the formats featured in PowerArchiver. Please click here to find out more about 7-Zip: 7-Zip Compression

PA format(Advanced Codec Pack)

Advanced Codec Pack combines the best available codecs and filters into one fantastic package. Most of the codecs and filters are built by us at Conexware and we also use the best open source tools where needed. PA (.pa) format has two distinctive modes – the Optimized Strong mode that focuses on superior compression strength and Optimized Fast mode that focuses on combination of great speed and good compression strength (better than ZIP in every way). Since the PA format is still in production, only use it if you are exchanging files with someone who also uses the latest PowerArchiver version.

Opening an Existing Archive

General Information

For introductory information, please see the section entitled “Brief Tutorial - Opening Archive”.

To open an existing archive, select “Open Archive” from the PowerArchiver toolbar. This will activate the standard Open Archive dialog box.

Next, select the archive you want to open in the Open dialog box. Use the “Look in:” combo box to select the appropriate folder and click on the archive in the list below.

Press the OK button when you have made your selection.

To list self-extracting archives in the New and Open dialog boxes, select the “All archives, encoded and .exe files” entry in the “Files of type:” combo box.

Please Note:

When self-extracting archives are listed in the Open dialog box, all EXE files in the selected folder will be listed, even if they are not actually self-extracting archives. PowerArchiver is not able to determine if an EXE file is a self-extracting archive until it has been opened.

Finding Archives

PowerArchiver can help you find archives if you do not know exactly where they are located on your computer.

To activate the “Find Archives” tool, click on the “File> Find Archives” menu.

Options

“Search this PC for ZIP files” - searches all hard drives in your computer automatically (network disks and CD-ROM disks are not searched)
“Search only drive” - searches a specified disk (for example, a floppy disk or CD-ROM)
“Manually select ZIP file” - gives you an option to locate the file manually
Once you start searching, you can can stop anytime by clicking on “Stop”.
Once the search is finished, PowerArchiver will add all found files to your “Favorite Folders” for your convenience (If you selected manual search, PowerArchiver will open selected file in the main window).

Please Note

PowerArchiver will search for all formats it supports, such as ZIP, 7-Zip, PA, CAB, RAR, ACE, TAR, ISO, etc.

Compiled from the official PowerArchiver Wiki (https://wiki.powerarchiver.com/)