Viewing Archives

Archive Manager enables you to view several aspects of an archive.

6.1. To View the Properties of an Archive

To view the properties of an archive, choose Archive ▸ Properties to display the Properties dialogue. The Properties dialogue displays the following information about the archive:

Name

The name of the archive.

Location

The position of the archive in the file system.

Modified on

The date and time at which the archive was last modified.

Archive size

The size of the archive contents when compressed.

Content size

The size of the archive contents when uncompressed. This information is also available in the statusbar.

Compression ratio

The compression ratio is a value used to describe the reduction in size of the data. For example a compression ratio of 5 means that the compressed archive is 1/5th the size of the original data.

Number of files

The number of files in the archive.

6.2. To View the Contents of an Archive

Archive Manager displays the archive contents in the main window as a file list with the following columns:

Name

The name of a file or folder in the archive.

Size

The size of the file when the file is extracted from the archive. For a folder, the Size field is blank. For information on how to display the size of the compressed file, see Section 7.3 ― To Display Additional Details.

Type

The type of the file. For a folder, the value in the Type field is Folder.

Date modified

The date on which the file was last modified. For a folder, the Date modified field is blank.

Location

The path to the file within the archive. This column is visible only when the window is in file view, when in folder view the location of the files is displayed in the Location text box of the folderbar. For more information about view types see Section 7.1.1 ― Folder View.

If another program has modified the archive since Archive Manager opened the archive, choose View ▸ Reload to reload the archive contents from disk.

For information on how to customise the way that Archive Manager displays the archive contents, see Section 7 ― Customising the Archive Display.

For more advanced tasks, use an application installed on your system. For more information, see Section 6.3 ― To View a File in an Archive.

6.3. To View a File in an Archive

To view a file in an archive follow the steps described in Section 5.6 ― To Modify a File in an Archive. If you save the opened file, click Cancel when Archive Manager asks confirmation to update the file in the archive.

6.4. To Test the Integrity of an Archive

Sometimes an archive can be damaged for some reason, to check whether an archive is damaged, choose Archive ▸ Test Integrity:

  • If the archive contains no errors, Archive Manager opens the Test Result dialogue to list each file in the archive, and indicates that each file has status OK.
  • If the archive contains an error, Archive Manager opens the Test Result dialogue displaying the part of the archive contains the error.

A damaged archive can be impossible to extract, this can bring to a loss of data. For this reason you should test the archive integrity before deleting the original files.

If the archive contains encrypted files, Archive Manager asks the password of the archive before performing the test.

Not all the archive types support the integrity testing; the following is the list of archive types that can be tested for integrity: 7-Zip, RAR, ZIP, ACE, ARJ and Zoo.

Tip

To test the integrity of an archive that doesn't support the integrity testing, extract all the files from the archive and check that the operation is completed successfully.