Compressed Files Save Space

What is Winrar and how to Integrate into the Windows Enviroment

© Brendan Vittum

Apr 7, 2009

There are many reasons to compress the files on a computer to a smaller size, whether to fit files on USB drives for back or transport, to meet the size limits for e-mail attachments, saving space on hard drives, creating CD backups, or providing faster downloads of files offered from a web site.

Compressing files in all of these cases mean less space or bandwidth – Smaller Is Better!

What is WinRAR?

There are as many programs to compress files and folders in the Windows Environment as there are reasons for compressing files and folders. One of the most effective, and easiest, methods, is to use WinRAR. RAR files can be created and accessed with the WinRAR software offered by RARLAB whose home on the web is at http://www.rarlab.com.

WinRAR is a Windows version of the RAR archiver which is a very powerful tool for creating, editing, and controlling archive files. With several versions of RAR available, all major Operating Systems can use this tool for compressing files making the output files easily transported to a number of systems.

WinRAR Features:

RAR comes in two versions for Windows, a command line console version, and a graphical user interface (GUI) version called WinRAR. With WinRAR one can:

• Create, Open, and Manipulate both RAR and ZIPcompressed files.
• Use of a sophisticated native file compression algorithm.
• Use of algorithms optimized for text, audio, graphics.
• 32-bit and 64-bit Intel executable compression architecture support.
• Easily integrate the software into the Windows shell Environment including drag-and-drop capabilities and a wizard.
• Command line interface.
• Open and extract non-RAR compressed files including CAB, ARJ, LZH, TAR, GZ, ACE, UUE, BZ2, JAR, and ISO.
• Use of Solid Archiving which can increase your compression ratio between 10% to 50% better than other common file compression methods.
• Create self-extracting compressed files.
• Recover physically damaged compressed file archives or recover missing parts of multi volume compressed files.
• Unicode file name support.

The software offers a host of other features like compressed file encryption, archive comments, error logging, as well.

One of the nice things one can do with WinRAR very quickly is to integrate the software directly into the Windows Shell Environment as mentioned above. Once the software is downloaded and installed, which comes with a 40 day test or trial period, Integrating WinRAR into windows makes it very easy to use.

How to Integrate WinRAR into windows:

1. Open WinRAR.
2. Navigate to Options > Settings.
3. Click the Integration tab.
4. Under Shell Integration make sure the following options are checked:
   1. Integrate WinRAR into Shell.
   2. Cascade context menu.
   3. Icons in context menu
5. Click the button underneath labeled Context Menu Items.
   1. Check everything in the window which opens up.
   2. Click OK until you are back at the main program interface.

These settings will add a useful Context Menu for WinRAR directly into Windows Operating System allowing easy access to WinRAR instantly through My Computer or Windows Explorer when right-clicking with the mouse on files or folders.

The main WinRAR program interface.

The WinRAR Options Integration tab.

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