



the 7-Zip standalone console version from the 7-Zip download page.Download one of the following (32 bit versions were used for this guide) WinXP was used to verify the information in this guide. Although this guide is designed to enable the user to accomplish this task quickly and easily, it is assumed that the reader is already familiar with creating and using batch files and has some experience with using compression utilities. Using either of these utilities to automate archiving needs is fairly easy to do, costs nothing, and saves time. This guide covers the use of two free archiving utilities, the command-line add-on utility for IZArc and the standalone console version for 7-Zip. For using the WinRAR command-line tools, see this post.Īutomating compression tasks using batch files or other scripting languages makes it simple and fast to compress, copy, rename, and move files from the same folder(s) when it’s necessary to do so on a regular basis. While WinRar isn't free, it's been our preferred compression app for years.This guide demonstrates how to automate repetitive compression tasks using batch files with two popular free archiving tools, the command-line utility for IZArc (freeware) and the standalone console version of 7-Zip (7-Zip Extra: standalone console version). As you can see, it's nice to have as a backup and to geek out, but at the end of the day, we prefer to use WinRar, PeaZip, or 7-Zip. There are a few options, so once again, remember to use /? to see the list. With makecab, you can compress files into a CAB. Makecab is the lossless data compression tool. Instead, you'll need to type in extrac32 |more. You can also rename, display, and more.Įxtrac32 is the CAB extraction utility that you can use to only extract a single file from a CAB. Extrac32 is a little different and explained below.Įxpand is the file expansion utility that's perfect for extracting all the files in a CAB. For two of the three apps, you can type in the app name, followed by a question mark to see your options. To use these tools, you'll want to open a command prompt or PowerShell and change directories to the folder with the CAB files. Those three tools are expand.exe, makecab.exe, and extrac32.exe. TIP: Hard to fix Windows Problems? Repair/Restore Missing Windows OS Files Damaged by Malware with a few clicks
