Only thing I would like to do with it, is have it name the files a little better. But as-is, it does this trick perfectly.

Thanx for this nice little gem!

WinRAR is NOT.

First, you have to choose the files called rar in explorer, with the search function, using the switch: “*.rar NO *part* NO *sub*” – then only the *.rar files will come up.

I am stuck at this point, but trying further. I let you know about any solution.

You could try Far Manager, or Total Commander (and as a FREE alternative, Necromancer’s DOS Navigator – it isn’t only for DOS anymore).

I am using file managers extensively, and the task is trivial for all three of them, although, under each of these you need to use other features to achieve this. In Far it will be a “find” option followed by selecting everything and extracting all. In NDN it will be the “flatten” option, then selection and extraction. I don’t remember right now how to do this under Total Commander, but I am sure there is an easy way to do this.

It was basically designed to let you run other commandline tools in situations like the one you describe. On the Drag+Drop Robot webpage you’ll even see a demo movie which shows it being used to zip and unzip large groups of files.

Again, i don’t think the program would be overkill for what you are trying to do since there are other programs designed specificially for what you are wanting, but if for example you needed to do other stuff as you unzipped or if you needed more control over the operation, you might find it useful.

-mouser

http://www.extractnow.com/

“ExtractNow is a simple utility that allows you to extract multiple archives quickly and easily. ExtractNow is not a complete archival solution. It’s main purpose it to allow the user to extract multiple archives easily.”

Even does the recursive scan you want :) Just drop the top level folder on it…

WinRAR (shareware) can do this natively – select folder, press extract button, select “extract to separate folders” option (or something like that, I have non-english interface) – otherwise it would only process first found archive.

Long (but free :) ) way – windows find function, search for all archives, select all of them, right click, process with capable archiver that can work with multiply files and can integrate to context menu (tested with 7zip, option is “unpack to *”). Main problem – it’s hard to predict where unpacked folders wil land (near one of multiply archives, no idea how is location chosen).

Update – figured it out. “Extract” option, type path like “c:\unpacked\*\” and each archive will be unpacked to separate sub-folder (generated from archive name) in “c:\unpacked\”