WinRAR

WinRAR is one of the most popular archiving software solutions out there, due to the plethora of features it comes with, all packed within a highly intuitive GUI.

During the installation process, you get the possibility to add the functions of WinRAR to your right-click menu, thus speeding up its compression and extraction operations. If you are unsure about this the shell integration at this point, you can just skip it and enable it at a later time from the Settings window.

If you do choose to benefit from this feature, you will be able to create new archives and extract the contents of a package by right-clicking any file on your PC. Moreover, you can personalize the items in these submenus by removing or adding them with ease.

Due to WinRAR, you can not only build new archives, but also unpack a selected archive or add new files to an existing package. The supported formats are 7z, ARJ, ZIP, RAR, TAR, ISO, CAB, IZ, LZH and so on.

You also get to convert your archives from one format to another, or assign a password that will be used to protect the packages you create.

Another function provided by WinRAR is searching within the contents of a chosen file, without needing to first extract the data. You can enable hexadecimal search, match the letter case or skip encrypted files.

When it comes to extracting documents, you have the choice to extract and replace files, extract and update files, or extract only fresh files. If you enable overwrite mode, you can also set the app to automatically rename existing files or simply skip them, depending on your needs.

Last but not least, as soon as it completes an extraction, WinRAR can power off the computer, send it to hibernate or sleep modes, or just exit the app and keep the PC running.

To wrap it up, WinRAR continues to be a worthy competitor to all compression software out there, especially since it can be used by novices and experts alike, without any effort.