2 Ways to Unzip Files Without WinZip

If you are trying to unzip files without WinZip, then you will know 2 such ways to unzip your zipped files without any third party tools.

Unzipping a zip, rar, 7z, war file, etc is always easier with WinZip, WinRAR, and 7z. But if you do not have permission to install any of these, then the Windows has its in-built feature to unzip the zip files directly. If you face any challenges using the inbuilt zip extractor, you can follow the next way using java to unzip compressed files and zip them as well.

Here is the step by step guide to unzip a file without using WinZip and using java extractor.

Steps to unzip files without WinZip:

1. Extract files using Windows extractor:

Windows has its inbuilt tool to extract any zip file. Here are the steps –

  1. Double-click on the zip file to open it in explorer view.
  2. In the toolbar, under the “Compressed Folder Tools” section, select the option “Extract all“.
  3. Else, right-click on the zip file and choose the option “Extract All…“.
  4. A window opens. Click on the Extract button to extract the files from the zip file.
Extract compressed files

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There is a possibility you may not find this in-built tool if you are using a Windows server computer. In my case, I faced a similar challenge and I had to extract the zip file using Java. This is an awesome tip, you may not be aware of that you can extract files using Java command as well.

2. Extract files using Java:

  1. Make sure JAVA_HOME is set in the Environment Variables.
    how to unzip files without winzip: set java_home
  2. Add the <JAVA_HOME>\bin path to the path variable.
    how to unzip files without winzip: set bin path
  3. Open a command prompt window and browse to the directory where the zip/war/jar is kept or create a new folder and put the zip file inside it. So, when the zip is extracted, it will extract the contents to the folder.
  4. Type jar -tvf Sample.zip  to know the contents of the zipped file
    how to unzip files without winzip: Read contents of a zip file using java
  5. Type jar -xvf Sample.zip to extract the files
    how to unzip files without winzip: how to unzip files without winzip

Conclusion:

It does not matter if you have any paid tools like Winzip or Winrar to extract the compressed files. Rather than installing any free applications to extract zip files in Windows 10, try out the 2 possible easy ways to extract files.

I hope this helped you to unzip files without using WinZip, WinRAR or any other software. Using Java to extract zip file is an awesome trick that many people don’t know.

Cheers !!!

2 thoughts on “2 Ways to Unzip Files Without WinZip”

    1. You can try installing Winrar or 7zip. 7zip is the industry standard, that should not be a problem to install.
      Just in case you are not allowed to install anything, you can go by the method #2 by extract by using Java command. Java needs to be installed in this case 🙂

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