How to split and join files using 7-zip free tool?

Do you want to split large files in to small parts so that you can easily transfer them or copy to CD/DVD media? Learn how to use the free tool 7-zip to compress, split and join files.

WinZip has been ruling the compress/decompress market for several years. Eventually, it became a paid utility and people started looking for other free alternatives. With Windows XP, Microsoft made the compression and decompression part of Windows and was offered free. However, many people like me still depended on other tools for performance reasons. The default compression utility included with Windows is relatively slow while tools like WiZip and 7-Zip offer much better performance

Free compression and decompression tools

There are several free tools to create .zip files and decompress. Some of them have free trial versions while others are completely free. In this article, I will discuss about a completely free and handy utility to create zip files, decompress .rar and .zip files, split large files in to small files or join split files back to form the original file. 7-zip is a completely free tool that can do all these tasks for you

How to use 7-zip to split files?

When you install 7-zip, it will add some handy menu items to your Windows Explorer context menu which will allow you to compress and decompress files by right clicking on the files. However, splitting and joining files are bit tricky with 7-zip.

There are 2 ways you can split files using 7-zip.

Option 1. While making a compressed file, choose the options to split.

Open 7-zip

Navigate to the folder you want to compress and select the files

Click the button "Add" in the toolbar.

It will open a dialog box. Look for the option "Split to volumes". Specify a size in "bytes". This will be the size of each split file it creates. You may select the pre-configured values for copying to CD/DVD etc.

Press "OK". It will compress the selected files and will split the compressed files in to multiple files with the extension .001, 002, .003 etc.

You may later join these files using the same approach with 7-zip.

Option 2. Split existing compressed files
To split an existing .zip file or .rar file, follow the steps below:

1. Open 7-zip

2. Navigate to the folder and select the .zip or .rar file to be split.

3. Right click on the compressed file to be split.

4. Choose the option "Split" on the context menu.

5. Choose a size for the split files.

6. Press "OK".



It will create the split files with the extension .001, .002, .003 in sequential order.

How to join files using 7-zip free tool?

You can follow the steps similar to splitting the files. Do the following steps to join the files split using 7-zip:

Open 7-zip tool

Navigate to the folder where the split files are located (.001, .002, .003 etc)

Select the file with the extension .001

Right click and choose the option 'Combine files'

Choose the destination folder where you want the combined file to be places. Press "OK"

7-zip will combine all the files and place them in the folder you selected. In case of compressed files, you can use it as normal compressed files and may extract using any tools like WinZip or 7-Zip.

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