Archives

An archive opens like a folder: you go into it, take files out of it, and drop your own into it.

Compress, decompress

F9 compresses the selection, Alt+F9 decompresses. The dialog says what it writes, and compression runs alongside the interface: the window stays responsive in the meantime.

Several archives are decompressed in a single gesture, under the same answers: the destination, what to do with names already taken and the password are asked once and apply to all. The entry is only offered on a selection made entirely of archives — one ordinary file in the middle, and it goes away.

“Compress” never goes away for a file, archive included. Recompressing a ZIP is most often pointless, but that is a reason not to do it, not to remove the action: an .apk or a .jar counts as an archive without anyone seeing it that way, and you want to be able to pack them like any other file.

Encrypted ZIPs

A ZIP can be encrypted with a password. Adding a file to an encrypted ZIP copies the data already there as it is when possible — without decrypting or recompressing it —, and hands the work to 7-Zip when it is installed: it is faster, and the result is one that another tool will open.

A file that is already there is replaced without being erased first; an identical file is skipped.

The formats

ZIP from end to end. The formats that only 7-Zip can open are offered only if it answers: better not to offer than to promise and fail.

Meneaufile manual, in English.