Self-Extracting Zip Files

Opus lets you convert a Zip archive into what's called a self-extracting archive. This turns an archive file (which needs another program to decompress it) into an executable program that you can send to people. When they run the program, an easy-to-use interface will guide them through extracting the contents of the archive.

Now that Windows itself comes with built-in support for Zip files self-extracting archives are not as widely used as they once were, but there are still some uses for them.

 

To create a self-extracting archive, you must first create the source Zip archive. You can use the Add to Archive dialog to create a Zip archive and convert it to self-extracting format in one step, or you can create the archive and then convert it separately using the context menu command that Opus adds automatically to the context menu for .zip files.

SFX menu.png 

This context menu can be disabled through the Archive Context Menu Preferences page, so if you don't see it when you right-click on a Zip file you may need to go and turn it on.

 

The Create Self-Extracting Archive dialog gives you several options that control the final self-extracting archive:

 

Once you have chosen your parameters, click the OK button to perform the actual conversion process. You should be left with a .exe file slightly larger than the original Zip archive.

 

When someone runs your self-extracting archive, they will see a window similar to this:

SFX.jpg 

From this window you can deduce the parameters we set when creating the extractor:


The Open folder to view files option is user-controllable; if they select that then a window (from their default folder browser) will be opened automatically to show the contents of the extracted archive.

The extraction function handles UAC automatically under Vista and Windows 7. If the user opts to extract to a UAC-protected location (like C:\Program Files) they will be asked to elevate to approve the action.