How to Open 7z Files on Windows, Including Password-Protected Ones

A 7z file is an archive made with 7-Zip, usually compressed with LZMA or LZMA2 and optionally encrypted with AES-256.

Like a ZIP, it bundles files and folders into one file. It often packs them smaller, and its encryption can hide the file names as well as the contents, which ZIP can't. That extra protection is also why some extractors can't open every 7z you receive.

Since its late-2023 updates, Windows 11 opens 7z files in File Explorer: double-click one to look inside, or right-click it, choose Extract All and pick a folder. The same works for RAR, TAR, TAR.GZ, GZ, BZ2, XZ and ZST archives.

Two cases still need another app. The built-in tool can't extract a password-protected 7z or RAR archive, and Windows 10 opens only ZIP files. For those, and for archives you don't fully trust, you need a separate extractor.

File Acture's Extract Archive unpacks 7z, ZIP, TAR and gzip archives (.tar.gz, .tgz and .gz), with or without a password.

For encrypted archives, type the password in the Password field. File Acture opens 7z archives encrypted with AES-256, including those whose file names are hidden, and ZIPs encrypted with AES or the older ZipCrypto. It checks the file's contents rather than trusting its extension, so a 7z archive saved with a .zip name still extracts, and you can unpack several archives in one run.

Each archive becomes a new folder in the folder you pick under Save to, or next to the archive if you choose Same folder as original. When everything sits in one top-level folder, that folder is the result; otherwise the folder is named after the archive. Leftovers from Macs, such as __MACOSX folders and ._ files, are skipped.

On Windows 11, double-click a plain 7z archive and File Explorer shows its contents like a folder, without extracting anything first.

File Acture doesn't list contents: Extract Archive unpacks the whole archive into a new folder, which you can delete if it isn't what you wanted. For a password-protected 7z, that's the way to see inside, since File Explorer can't extract it.

An archive can't run anything by itself, but a crafted one can try to write files outside the folder you extract to, or unpack into far more data than it looks like.

File Acture refuses archives whose entries point outside the destination with absolute paths, drive letters or .. steps, skips symbolic links, and stops an extraction that would grow past roughly 50 GB or 200,000 entries. Everything is unpacked into a hidden staging folder first, so a damaged archive or a canceled extraction leaves nothing half-extracted. And unlike an online extractor, it never uploads the archive.

File Acture doesn't open RAR archives, and it reads tar archives only when they're uncompressed or compressed with gzip.

• RAR files are skipped when you add them. On Windows 11, File Explorer extracts RAR archives that have no password.
• .tar.bz2 and .tar.xz aren't supported, but Windows 11's File Explorer opens them.
• Wrong password? File Acture tells you the password is incorrect, and nothing is extracted.
• Creating 7z: File Acture makes ZIPs, not 7z. To send files back securely, create an AES-256 ZIP, which 7-Zip opens too, or password-protect a PDF if it's a single document.
• Batches: the free version extracts up to 5 archives per run, with 3 runs on each PC; see pricing for Pro.