7-Zip is an open source file archiver. You may ask why not Winzip and WinRAR? Both Winzip and WinRAR are great file archivers and extractors. But neither of them are free. 7-Zip on the other hand is completely free, extremely small and supports a great variety of file formats. Download and installation is quick and painless. It resides in the user’s right click menu – if you need to use 7-Zip just right click on the file or folder. For more info check the 7-Zip Wikipedia page.

Features

  • High compression ratio in new 7z format with LZMA compression
  • Supported formats:
    • Packing / unpacking: 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR
    • Unpacking only: RAR, CAB, ISO, ARJ, LZH, CHM, Z, CPIO, RPM, DEB and NSIS
  • For ZIP and GZIP formats, 7-Zip provides a compression ratio that is 2-10 % better than the ratio provided by PKZip and WinZip
  • Self-extracting capability for 7z format
  • Integration with Windows Shell
  • Powerful File Manager
  • Powerful command line version
  • Plugin for FAR Manager
  • Localizations for 63 languages

How To zip with 7-Zip

  • Right click on file(s) or folder(s) ? go to 7-Zip and click ‘Add to archive…’

  • Select the archive format. Select .zip for most compatibility. and click OK

How To Extract with 7-Zip

  • Right click on zip file -> go to 7-Zip and click ‘Extract here’