RAR files are compacted files that let us to store more than one file or folder in each file. They are rather versatile and handy because they facilitate storage or sharing of files and folders. The archives compress the archived data reducing their amount of space it takes on the hard disk. RAR Files are rather analogous to Zip files but they offer much better data compression technology and they are a perfect space and organisation algorithm. The name RAR comes from their creator E. Roshal, who who introduced this compression algorithm.

There are several ways to unzip RAR archives nowadays. The most practical way to extract a RAR archive is to use extraction software that can be found on the Web. Some of them are freeware and a bunch are shareware. E.g. the most popular program online is WinRar, though it is unfortunately shareware.

The easiest way to open .rar files is to use one of the free RAR extractor available online. Case in point – 7-zip is a software that works on all computers and all versions of Windows. This application has lots of capabilities that are quite impressive when it comes to RAR file extraction.

In addition to these well known archivers there are also many other tools that can help you extract RAR archives. You can see some of them in the free RAR extractor software list. No matter which one you pick though, your archives can always be set to automatically open in that program; this will let you unzip and compress them to the program list or just by right-clicking on the files you want to unrar.

You can also unzip RAR files on the Web, as there are available some extraction programs that don’t need to be installed. For example, OpenRAR is one of these tools that provide you with a way to open your files with no fuss, or compress your files in one of the supported archive formats.