How to use winrar effectively - 7 tips
By Ashish MohtaWinRAR is one of the most popular compressing tools which is used to reduce the size of files which supports for many formats. For those who are not aware its similar to WinZip. While comparing, both winzip and winrar some of the features in WinRar were better than winzip, specially the interface. If you have been using winrar, great!!! Here are some tips which can give you a power hand while using winrar.
Enable Explorer like view
Single pane view is the default view, using that you will have to keep changing folders one by one to reach your file. But there is an easy way. One the winrar interface, goto “Options > Folder Tree > Show Disk Folder”. This will give you an explorer like window and selecting a file is easy now.
Enable Detail View
By default, you will get to see list but we need to see the details from time to time. “Goto “Options > File List > Details”
Check how much will be the compression and how long will it take to compress
This a very unique feature of Winrar. Suppose we have a large number of files or a single file which is more in size which you want to compress , how do you get to know how much time it will take?Select one or mutliple file which you want to compress, then on the winrar look for an “Info” Tab. Click that and you will get another window with 4 tabs. The first tab contains an “Estimate Button” . Clicking in this , the tool will tell you how much your data can be compressed in percentage and how much time will it take to compress. This is extremely useful as it will save a lot of time of yours instead of sitting and waiting it to finish.
Split Files using Winrar
What would you do if the compression measurement tells you that size can not be compressed more than 90% and size is too big either to fit on cd or mail. Winrar acts more than a compression tool. Here is how you can use it to split.
- Choose a file or folder you want to split.
- Right clicking on it and click “Add files to archives”
- It opens a tab, now you need to find “Split to file, bytes” drop down menu which is present at the lower part.
- Either you can enter tha value in bytes or select a predefined format like, 1.44 Mb floppy, CD Rom, DVD or even auto detect. The auto detect feature can check the destination space and split files according to that.
- Now archive it. You will see a list of files generated which are according to your need.
Make a Self Extracting archive:
Its a general problem that if I send you a winrar compressed archive you might not have the same software to open it or the worst i don’t have any compression tool. So what can you do? Easy , You can create a self extracting archive which will act like the softwares which get installed in one step.
- Click on Existing file you want to compress and make a normal archive.
- Now select the archive you just made, “Go to Tools > Convert archive to SFX”
- One more way is while creating an archive, you can just ask it to make an SFX.
Compress and Mail
Now if you want to compress and mail directly without additions steps and just on one click? Here is an extremely useful way.There is a “Compress and email” feature which has to be enabled if its not.
- “Go to Options > Settings “.
- It opens up another screen with lot of tabs. Click on the tab named “Integration“
- On the tab look for a button with label “Context Menus“. Click that
- This will open another window, which shows the list of features which pops up when you right click a file.
- Enable the “Compress and email” by checking it.
- Now right click on any file and you will see the menu enabled.
Change The Temporary Folder
Winrar requires to use a temporary place when it tries to compress a file. By default its located somewhere in C drive. If you don’t have much space there, you can always change the location.
- Goto Options > Settings .
- This opens up another scree with tabs, Now go to Paths Tab.
- Click on “Choose folder for temporary files” and select a path which suits you.
Resources :
- Download Winrar
- Windows and Mac OS X, Dos, Linux, Free BSD supported
- Available in trial or buy packages
UPDATE: Check out “How to create professional installer using winrar”
So what is the archiving tool you are using, I find winrar very useful, does your archiving tool give more features? Share with us in comments and we will get to know more.
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About The Author of this article: Ashish is one of the co-author of this blog and writes on various interesting softwares, PC tips and more. You can read more of his articles here. |
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I use WinRar a lot to tell you the truth. Like 100 times a day
and most of the things mentioned here I never knew about them
Great post Ashish
Never try the other options and features that WinRar have.
Context menus has stopped working… tried just about everything i can think of
Downloaded ShellexView(freeware) and disabled a few other context menus and now it works again.