How to Open a Rar File
07. Dec, 2008 
6 Comments
Wondering what that “Rar” file was that you recently downloaded? And how do you open it anyway? Well, look no further as in this article we’ll cover what Rar files are and how to open them.
What Is a Rar File?
Rar files are just like Zip files, they are both compressed archives. Just like a .zip file, a .rar file can contain many files and folders. It can also compress them using mathematical algorithms so that the files in it use much less space than they would otherwise.
The .rar is one of the most popular compression formats out there. In fact, it has become the standard for sharing files on file sharing sites and services like RapidShare, MegaUpload, and BitTorrent. People mainly prefer Rar because its compression algorithm is better than Zip and other file fomats.It creates much smaller archives, and more importantly, it allows you to split your file into multiple archives. In fact, the .rar format is a great way to save space on flash drives with small storage capacity. Because of such great qualities, the Rar is also a great way to backup your important files and folders.
Unfortunately, Windows (or any other Operating System, for that matter) doesn’t have built-in support for the Rar file format. So you can’t extract or “unrar” Rar files right out-of-the-box. Fortunately, a few good software programs do exist that allow you to open Rar files easily.
Here are two such programs, for Windows and Mac OS X respectively, with which you can open a rar file:
Open Rar Files on Windows
BitZipper
Supports Multiple Formats
BitZipper is a software program made to handle all sorts of archive formats. Not only can it open Rar files, but it can also open over 40 other archive (whether self-extracting or normal) and encoding formats (such as 001, 7z, ace, arc, arj, bh, bzip2, bz2, cab, chm, chw, cpio, deb, dmg, doc, enc, exe, gz, gzip, hfs, hxs, iso, jar, lha, lzh, lzma, msi, ppt, rpm, tar, tbz, tgz, txz, uu, uue, war, wim, xar, xxe, xz, xls, z, zip, zipx, and zoo)! With BitZipper, instead of having to install multiple programs to open such a multitude of archiving formats, you can now open all these with just one single program.
File Viewer
Unlike competing software programs, BitZipper has a built-in file viewer that allows you to view many image file formats – such as TIFF, JPEG, GIF, ICO etc – before you even extract them.
Simple, Familiar, and Easy-to-Use
The interface of BitZipper is very simple and easy to use. It kind of resembles the Windows Explorer. Just like in Windows Explorer, you can drag and drop files into and out of archives. It also provides easy-to-use wizards for creating and extracting archives and for creating backups. No more having to fiddle around with complex-looking interfaces.
Bulk Processing
BitZipper also supports the processing of many archive files at once. So if you want to extract 20 different archives then you can do so with BitZipper all at once. No more having to open each archive one-by-one.
Tab Feature
This is one feature I like the most about BitZipper. I’ve yet to see this in any other program that allows to open rar files. The tab feature works just like the tabs in your web browser – you can open each file in a new tab and work with them simultaneously by just switching between tabs.
Advanced Search
Finally, with BitZipper you can also search within the contents of the files within your Rar file without extracting it.
BitZipper is the best archive management software progam I’ve come across and certainly the best one that opens rar files.
Click here to download BitZipper
Open Rar Files on Mac OS X
Coming Soon…
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thanksssssss
is it possible to extract from a rar file that has not yet been fully downloaded yet? (say its stuck at 90% and won’t go ahead).
I downloaded a one part of movie,It is a winRAR format. but i am not able to extract file . when i tried to extract it. it will display a message ” you need a next volume of winRAR how to open that file
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