Using IZArc to extract archives ( zip & others )

As already said, before you can work with the content of a zip archive (or any other type of archive), you need to extract its content to a location on your computer´s hard drive first. An archive may contain one single file or many dozens or even hundreds of different files, which are frequently organized in folders and subfolders inside this archive.

To show you how you can use IZArc to extract a zip archive (or any other supported format), I´m going to use my blogging video tutorial as an example. The screenshot below shows you how the start screen of IZArc looks like.

Just in case you do not see the folders tree on the left side, click on the View menu and select the Explorer Display Style option.

To view the content and the folder structure of a zip archive like the blogging tutorial, you simply browse to the folder where you have stored the archive file (blogtutorial.zip) and double click on the archive file. Then you can browse within this archive while it is still packed.

I recommend you always take a look inside an archive to see it´s content structure before you extract it. This is especially important when you have lots of archives in the same folder on your local drive (f.ex. downloads of website scripts or templates). Sometimes the different files inside an archive are all stored inside a folder, so you can safely extract it as is. But many other times there are files in the root of the archive - in this case you should create a subfolder on your local drive and extract the archive to this new subfolder in order to prevent older files from being overwritten.

The quickest way to extract an archive is to right click on its file name and select the option IZArc » Extract Here. This will extract the content of the archive to the currently opened folder on your computer´s hard drive.

You can also have IZArc to create a new subfolder for you during the extraction. In this case, right click on the archive file (blogtutorial.zip) and choose the option IZArc » Extract to .... This will open a new dialog window, where IZArc already suggests a subfolder with the same name as the archive file and you can also select some options before extracting the archive.

The video below explains the process with more details. See how you can browse through the content of an archive and why it is important to know the archive´s folder structure before extracting it. ( video opens in new window ).