There may be multiple solutions for this issue. You may be able to compress the file for instance, depending on the file type. This works well with uncompressed file types like txt, and not at all with already compressed file types like jpg or avi.

For the compressing, you could use a program like 7-zip. This program is also handy for the next option: Splitting the file into smaller parts. Here is how you do that in detail.

Start 7-zip after installation. Use the location bar to navigate to the folder that contains the large file on your system. Right-click the file and select the Split operation from the program’s context menu.

This opens a new configuration window where you need to specify the destination for the split files and the maximum size of each volume.

You can select one of the pre-configured values or enter your own into the form directly. Add M to the end if you want to specify the file size in Megabytes.

7-Zip splits the file based on the configuration. You end up with files ending with 001, 002, 003 in the selected directory.

You can use 7-Zip, or any compatible software, to merge the files again. With 7-zip, you would simply right-click the first part of the split file (the 001 file) and select Combine files from the options to do so.

This method be problematic if the user who receives the files does not have such a software or does not know how to use it.

The alternative here is to create a self extracting file instead. Only problem is that 7-zip does not support this operation. You can either create a self-extracting file, or you can split the file but not both.

Commercial software like WinRar can do that on the other hand. WinRar is capable of splitting files into smaller parts and creating a self-extracting archive at the same time.

I’m not aware of a freeware that can create a multi-part self-extracting archive. If you know of a software that can do that let me know in the comments.

Update: The free portable software GSplit can create multi-part self-extracting archives. You select the block size under Type and Size in the program interface.

The SFX option is activated under Self-Uniting > Properties.

You can download GSplit from the official homepage. (thanks Shinjie)

A relatively new program like HaoZip needs to at least match the functionality of those programs, or provide users with a unique feature that the other compression programs do not offer to stand a chance.

When you look at the application for the first time you may notice the similarities to the WinRar interface. You have the icon bar at the top, the path and navigational elements, a sidebar with a folder browser and the main area that displays the contents of the active folder.

Even the icons in the button bar are in nearly the same order. But similarities do not have to be a bad thing, as it could mean that users can start working right away without having to get to know the interface first.

But what about the program itself? HaoZip supports 49 different compression formats, from popular formats such as ZIP, RAR or 7z to lesser known formats like LZH, SPLIT or JAR. All or some of those formats can be associated with the program during setup, or under preferences after installation.

Additional customizations are available during installation. It is for instance possible to configure the program’s shell integration or log / history feature in detail. You can add a lot of items to the context menu. This includes standard extraction and archive creation options.

Only zip, 7z and tar archives can be created by Haozip, the remaining formats can only be unpacked. All standard compression features are supported. It is possible to password protect archives, encrypt file names, add comments or switch algorithms.

Additional features include:

• Repair, split, join, convert archives
• Create self-extracting archives
• Theme engine to install new interface themes
• Creation of different compression profiles
• Extraction of multiple archives each to their own distinct folder
• A 32-bit and 64-bit version is offered
• Built-in Tools, including image and text viewer, mp3 joiner, batch rename, md5 checksum calculator

The developer homepage is only available in Chinese which includes the online help. The program itself is offered as a multi-lingual version (Chinese / English).

Is there a reason to switch to Haozip if you are already using a program like 7-Zip, WinRar or Winzip? That depends. It boils down to the individual functionality. Maybe you do not want to pay each year to upgrade Winzip or WinRar, or you are missing support for jar or taz compression formats under 7-Zip. If you are currently missing a feature in your compression software, you may want to take Haozip for a test drive to see if it offers that feature. HaoZip is regardless of that a solid alternative for WinRar,Winzip and 7-Zip.

Haozip is offered on the developer website. It is best to use Google Translate to load the website unless you understand Chinese, that is. Your best bet is to download the multi-language version that is compatible with both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows. The green version of good press (what a translation) could be portable versions of the compression software, but that has not been tested. (via Caschy)

Update: English version of the developer page is available, have added link above. No need anymore to translate the page’s contents first.

The free software program can be used to create or extract archives. It supports both zip and 7z on the creating side and about a dozen archiving formats on the extraction side of things. Popular file extensions that it supports include rar, iso, gz or tar next to zip and 7z.

Configuration options are kept to a minimum which some experienced users may not like. There are for instance only four options to chose from when creating new archives. This includes the output format (zip or 7z), the compression level (minimum, optimal and maximum), the optional splitting of archives and password protection.

New files are added via drag and drop or the built-in file browser. The archive is created with a click on Compress or by dragging and dropping the icon in the upper right corner to a folder or desktop on the system.

Archives can be extracted in the main user interface by using the file browser to select them or by dragging and dropping them to the program window. The file browser did not filter supported file formats correctly. The default archive files filter displayed none, even if archives were located in the selected folder.

Free Zip Archiver integrates automatically with the Windows Explorer context menu which can also be used to unpack archives or create new archives directly from the default Windows file management tool.

A compact version of the interface is available which basically reduces it to an always on top drag and drop interface. Just drag and drop archives on the icon to unpack them to the local computer system.

Here is a short video that demonstrates some of the program’s features.

Free Zip Archiver is a program for the Microsoft Windows operating system. It is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows 2000, XP, Vista and Windows 7. It requires the Microsoft .NET Framework and will download files from the Internet during installation. Downloads are offered at the developer website over at Hamstersoft.

Some operating systems come with basic support for unzipping files. Windows 7 for instance can unzip zip files without third party tools. Then again, most users will encounter other compression formats such as 7z or rar eventually which means that they do not a third party software to unpack those files on their computer system.

I’d like to share the two programs that I use for the purpose. Wait, two programs? Yes, I’m using two programs to unzip files on my PC.

7-zip

7-zip is a classic unzip software that supports a wide variety of formats. It can pack and unpack formats such as zip, gzip, tar or 7z, and unpack only compression formats such as rar, iso, msi, cab or dmg.

The program integrates into Windows Explorer, so that it becomes possible to quickly unpack compressed files with a right-click on the file. It furthermore comes with a graphical user interface that can be used as well to pack or unpack files in the operating system.

I use 7-Zip to compress files and to unpack single archives on my computer. It’s extensive support of compression formats makes it ideal for those two tasks.

Extract Now

Have you ever downloaded or transferred many compressed files at once? I did, and that’s where I realized that 7-Zip was not the best program for those situations. Say you have a directory full of compressed files, some split into multiple files.

The best tool for this situation is Extract Now which integrates into Windows Explorer as well. Simply right-click the folder containing the compressed files and select Search for archives from the context menu.

Extract Now will locate all archives in the folder. The unzip software can be configured to extract all archives automatically, or after user input only. The program can also be configured to monitor directories to unpack new archives that are stored in the directories automatically.

In short; I use 7-zip to pack and unpack individual files, and Extract Now to mass extract compressed files in a directory.

Which unzip software do you use? Let me know in the comments.

Usually a lot of options are displayed when right-clicking files or folders in Windows Explorer which makes it more complex than necessary to selected the needed options. A right-click on an archive for instance displays options to open the archive, extract the files, extract the contents in the current folder, extract the contents to a folder with the same name as the archive and to test the archive.

The same is true for creating new archives as options are displayed to add the files and folders to the archive, compress and email the selection, create a 7z or zip archive and compress and email the selection as a 7z or zip archive.

The entries that are displayed in Windows Explorer can be configured right in 7-Zip. A click on Tools > Options will open the 7-Zip configuration menu. Switching to Plugins and clicking on the options button will open the Windows Explorer integration options.

It is possible to remove the options that are not needed so that they do not appear in Windows Explorer in the menu.

The changes will be visible immediately in Windows Explorer. There are of course other ways of handling Windows Explorer context menu entries like the Windows Explorer Menu Editor or File Menu Tools.

The 7-Zip Theme Manager can then be used to change the interface of the program itself as well as the icons in Windows Explorer. Each 7-Zip theme comes with a preview image of how the interface would look like if it would be applied to 7-Zip. Between 30-40 different themes are available ranging from graphically stunning themes like Vista Inspirat to playful themes like Star Wars or Futurama.

A click on the Activate Theme button will activate that theme. It is important that 7-Zip is closed during the procedure to avoid complications. 7-Zip will automatically use the activated theme from then on. More than 10 different filetype icons are available as well in the theme manager that can replace the original 7-Zip icons in Windows Explorer. The name of the theme or icon, the creator, license and website are listed below the theme preview window.

7-Zip Default:

7-Zip Vista Inspirat Theme:

The default 7-Zip theme and icons can be activated in the 7-Zip Theme Manager as well to undo the changes. The theme manager contains one additional button that will look for a new 7-Zip and theme version on the Internet.

This week saw a lot of updates and it was quite hard to pick one that would receive the update of the week award. Since the Open Office update has not been made official yet on their homepage I’m giving the award to Orbit Downloader which is in my opinion the best free downloader out there.

If you know of an application that has been updated but is missing in the list let me know, I will surely do my best to monitor it from now on and add it to the list.

µTorrent 1.8 Build 9137 Beta – a new Beta version of this lightweight Bittorrent client.

7-Zip 4.58 Alpha 5 – another popular archiver with support for many different zip extensions.

aTuner 1.9.82.17453 – a tiny tool that can change several settings of Ati and Nvidia video cards.

BitComet 20080320 Beta – a fast Bittorrent client.

CCleaner 2.06.567 – cleans the computer from temporary and other unnecessary files.

Cobian Backup 9.1.1.166 Beta – an excellent backup software with options to backup to an ftp server.

CodecInstaller 2.9.1 – analyzes multimedia files and displays information about the codecs that are needed to play them.

doPDF 6.0.257 – sets up a virtual printer that creates pdf documents.

DVDFab HD Decrypter 4.1.2.0 – copy DVDs to your hard drive and remove protections – if any – in the process.

FeedDemon 2.6.1.0 Beta – a desktop feed reader.

K-Lite Mega Codec Pack 3.8.5 – a highly popular codec package.

Locate 3.1.8.3260 Beta – Locate offers one of the fastest ways to search for files and content in files in Windows.

MediaCoder 0.6.1.4077 – a batch transcoder for audio and video files.

MediaMonkey 3.0.3.1147 Beta 3 – music organizer, manager and player.

Nokia PC Suite 6.86 Release 6 – applications to transfer to and backup data from your Nokia mobile phone.

ooVoo 1.5.1.96 Beta – offers multi-user video chat.

Norton Removal Tool 2008.0.3.15 – Some call it the best software Norton ever produced. Use this if you want to completely remove a Norton / Symantec product from your computer.

Open Office 2.4.0 – the final version of Open Office 2.4 after several release candidates. A popular replacement for Microsoft Office.

Orbit Downloader 2.6.4 – a fantastic download manager with many advanced features.

PeaZip 2.0 – an alternative to the more popular packers like Winzip and Winrar.

Recuva 1.12.291 – recover accidentally deleted files on your computer.

Songbird 0.5 RC2 – a multi-platform multimedia player.

SpeedFan 4.34 Beta 44 – manage the speed of the fans in your computer.

SUMo 1.7.0.42 Beta – Sumo scans your computer for known applications and checks their version against an online database to let you know if the computer is having the latest version installed.

Vista Codec Package 4.6.2 – add several missing video and audio codecs to Windows Vista at once.

WildBit Viewer 5.2 Alpha 4.0 – another update of this popular image viewer.

WinSCP 4.1 Beta – I’m almost exclusively using WinSCP to update my websites.

What I really like about IZArc is that it opens really quickly and seems to unpack files at least as fast as WinRar. I did not benchmark anything here so this is just my opinion. IZArc offers all the usual features that archive programs offer these days such as shell integration, drag and drop support, self-extracting archives and multi-volume archives.

IZArc can also be downloaded as a mobile version called IZArc2Go and a command line add-on for the main program that supports batch processing is also available at the official website. I don’t think the users that already use 7-zip will make the switch because of their program offering basically the same features.

Update: IZArc has been in development for quite some time. After four years, it is still being actively developed. When you look at the program’s feature list you notice that it supports a wide variety of them. This includes common features like creating, deleting and adding archives, but also less common features like converting an archive into a different format, repairing broken archives or merging multi-volume sets.

IZArc supports a few dozen archive file types plus several CD and VD image formats, which makes the archiving software a versatile tool.

The program integrates well, even on 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system. It integrates nicely into Windows Explorer so that it becomes possible to access the most common functions directly with a right-click and the selection of the right option from the context menu.

7zip is an Open Source archiving software that handles all popular compression formats with bravura. It supports zip, rar, gz, its own format 7z as well as other popular formats on the unpacking side, and 7z as well as zip, gzip and a few other formats on the compression side of things.

The program integrates nicely into the computer. It is for instance possible to assign the file formats to 7-zip so that they are opened automatically with the application, or integrate commands into Windows Explorer’s context menu to create or unpack archives directly without opening the program interface first.

The integration is setup during program installation, and then accessible in the program options. Here it is possible to add or remove context menu entries or file associations.

The interface is minimalistic. The files of the current directory or archive are displayed in the program, along with the path to the file or folder, and controls at the top. Files can be dragged and dropped from the interface, to either add them to an archive or unpack them from an archive.

The controls are used to add or extract contents with the built-in file browser. There are also options to test archives, to delete files or copy and move them. It is alternatively possible to right-click and use the context menu to perform the operations.

The software supports keyboards to perform operations faster. It is for instance possible to create favorite folder shortcuts to open those folders directly in the 7-zip program, or perform actions like copying or extracting files with the help of these shortcuts.

7-zip is one of the best free packers for the Windows operating system. It is feature rich and compatible with all popular archiving formats.

Head over to 7-zip.org do download this excellent freeware.