This article will limit itself to explaining how to install and uninstall the program. The guide also provides its own pragmatic tutorial, Using 7-Zip, which explains using the program, and also gives links to other sources of information about the program.

7-Zip may not be your favourite choice of compression and archiving utility. Fortunately, there are several alternatives. The guide lists a few here, but makes no judgements, as it is impossible to analyse all of them in depth.

The Wikipedia also provides a comparison list of file archivers.

Igor Pavlov's utility, 7-Zip, can be downloaded from his site http://www.7-zip.org. Click on the download link on the home page of the latest version, currently 4.42 (2006-05-14), in executable form (.exe). As for all guide downloads, I have saved this file in my downloads folder creating a www.7-zip.org sub folder. Use Explorer to open this sub folder, then double click on the 7z442.exe file and you will see the following dialog box:

If you're happy (as I am) to keep the installed program in the default destination folder, click on Install. If you prefer to install the program elsewhere, then choose your folder first by clicking on the Browse... button. Once the program has been installed, you'll see:

Click on Finish to complete the installation.

Once you have installed the program, there are some options that you may want to change to improve its usefulness. The program can be launched from the Windows program menu, by clicking on the Start button, then Programs, followed by 7-Zip and finally 7-Zip File Manager, as shown below:

The program comes with a help file which explains all the important dialog boxes, menus and short cuts. Either choose 7-Zip Help as shown above, or click on Help, then Contents... in the 7-Zip program menu bar, or press the F1 key. Although rather brief, it does give a complete overview of all the features, including a command line version, which will not be dealt with here.

To change the default options, click on Tools, and then Options... from the main menu bar, thus:

7-Zip does not associate itself with any file extensions by default. However, you may find it more useful to make at least some associations as shown in the figure below:

The associations that I have chosen here (as shown by the ticks in the check boxes) cover the most common types of file archiving formats. Click on Apply to create the associations.

We can also make some minor aesthetic changes to the program, by clicking on the Settings tab, thus:

Again, click on Apply to make the changes.

The Plugins tab lists all available plugins for 7-Zip, though currently there is only one – the 7-Zip plugin, which extends the Explorer context menu. With the 7-Zip plugin highlighted, click on Options...:

The System tab allows you to remove 7-Zip integration in Explorer, and add or remove context menu items. Personally, I find the default settings perfectly satisfactory.

Finally, for those of us whose English is a second language, you can also set the language (from a very large list), by clicking on the Language tab, as shown below:

Once again, click on Apply to change the language. Then click on OK to close the dialog box.

If you've made the same changes to the options that I made, then you can now open a zip file within Explorer by simply double clicking on it, as shown below (note also the changes to the list presentation, and the parent folder, denoted by ..):

You are now ready for the guide's pragmatic tutorial in the Using 7-Zip article.

7-Zip does not provide its own uninstall program, so I will use the standard Windows mechanism. Before uninstalling 7-Zip, however, you should remove the file extension associations that were previously made. Open the 7-Zip program, then click on Tools, and then Options... from the main menu bar. The Options dialog will appear, click on the System tab, and make sure that all ticks in the check boxes are removed. Click on Apply to make the changes, then click on Close, and finally close the program itself.

From the desktop, double click on My Computer, then from the left hand pane select Add or remove programs thus:

Select the 7-Zip program, then click on Remove.

Click on Uninstall.

If you are wondering why you have to reboot your computer, it is because the extensions that 7-Zip added to Explorer cannot be removed while Explorer is still running. Choose whether you want to reboot your computer now, or later, then click on Finish.