How to open a RAR file

You downloaded from a website or received attached in a e-mail a file with a strange extension. You've tried to open it by double-clicking the icon just to discover that your operating system "can not open this file". Now you want to know how to open a RAR file, right?

No problem, a RAR is just a compressed archive that works pretty the same way as the famous ZIP, i.e. a RAR archive is just like a zipped file. But don't worry, even if you aren't familiar with compressed files keep reading 'cause all you'll need is a software to extract RAR files.

What's a RAR file?

Differences between RAR and ZIP

How to open a RAR file in Windows?

How to open a RAR file in Mac OS X?

How to open a RAR file in Linux?

How to open a RAR file online?

Multi-volume RAR files

How to create RAR files?

A RAR file is a compressed archive. This means that it's a data container that stores one or more files, i.e. the RAR is an archive. Also means that techniques are used to reduce the size of the archive; the size of the RAR is smaller than the total size of all files it contains, i.e. the archive is compressed.

Compressed files have been used for years to facilitate the task of send them over the Internet. As the resulting files are smaller the transfer is faster. They also have been used to package files, specially for backup purposes, occupying less storage space.

You've probably manipulated compressed files before. Maybe not a RAR file but surely a ZIP one. People uses ZIP files all the time these days, mainly to attach them to e-mails. You pick the data file(s), zip (compress) it and attach the resulting file to the e-mail. When the receiver get the file, he unzip (decompress, extract) it and get the original data again; same size and format.

So, if the RAR is pretty much the same thing that the ZIP, what are the differences between RAR and ZIP, you should be asking. Do you remember that a compressed file is reduced in size? Well, the differences between RAR and ZIP is basically the techniques used to reduce i.e. compress the file.

There are many other minor differences that doesn't mean much for the no "tech savvy". What does matters is that the file compressed with RAR is 8 to 30% smaller than the same file compressed with ZIP.

As the RAR seems better maybe you are asking why we not always use it instead of ZIP. The main reason is that RAR is a proprietary format created by Eugene Roshal (thus RAR, that stands for Roshal ARchive). Only the softwares developed by Roshal are able to create RAR files, unlike ZIP that are supported by almost all operating systems without third-party software.

Almost all decompression softwares for Windows work basically in the same way, following one of the steps:

1. You open the compressed file by double-clicking the icon; at the top of the utility you click the extract button.
2. Right click the compressed file, choose the “extract to” option in the cascading menu (maybe in a sub-menu).
3. Open the software; choose open from the File menu; select the compressed file to open; click the extract button.

That's all. Easy, not? But first you have to install a software to extract RAR files. Let me give you 2 options: 7-Zip and BitZipper.

The best free option for Windows is 7-Zip. The 7-Zip utility is very simple and the installation file is very small, just 1 MB.

BitZipper is a more powerful option that supports 44 different compression formats, including of course the RAR files; you can decompress all these formats without any external tools. So you hardly will receive a compressed file that it can't handle. BitZipper is a paid software. The license costs $24.95 but you can use it for free for 30 days.

For Mac OS X the main options are The Unarchiver, Zipeg and StuffIt Expander.

The Unarchiver is an unpacker very similar to the BOMArchiveHelper.app, the built-in unpacker of Mac OS X. It's free open source; to install in your system just download from site, put it into a folder (preferably your Applications folder) and then set archive filetypes to open using it.

Zipeg also is a free alternative for Mac OS X. It seems to be very simple.

StuffIt Expander seems to be the best option for Mac OS X if you can pay for it. This is a classical Mac program that now is also available for Windows 7, Vista and XP, as stated in the website. The license costs from $29.99 to $49.99.

In Linux you can use unrar at command line. It's a freeware program provided by RARLAB only to extract RAR files. If it's not present in your system you can get it at this page.

If you want a better option you can try the command line tool p7zip. As the 7-Zip program stated above is free open source, an independent developer has ported it to Linux.

If you don't want to install a piece of software at your computer right now and only have a small RAR file to decompress, I've found a online service that let you upload a RAR file and get its content.

I looked at the site and only discovered that your file needs to be smaller then 25 MB and the service is paid. Maybe you're able to discover more details and post in the comments box below. OpenRARFile.com.

A huge RAR archive can be broken into a few smaller files, which are called volumes. Old versions of WinRAR create multi-volumes with the extensions .rar (first volume), .r00, .r01, .r02, … The new versions name the volumes as .part1.rar (first volume), .part2.rar, .part3.rar, …

To extract multi-volume RAR files put all them in the same directory and extract the first volume. The software cares about the rest.

All programs cited above are able only to decompress RAR files. The only softwares that can create RAR files are the WinRAR (Graphic software to Windows) and RAR (command line tool for Mac OS X and Linux), both developed by Eugene Roshal at RARLAB.

The RARLAB's softwares are paid; you can use them as trial for 40 days. After the trial period it starts to ask for license, but you'll still be able to use it. The license to use the program on one computer is $29.