How to Force-Open a Corrupt Archive

Learn the different ways to open corrupt archive

5 min. read

Updated onOctober 4, 2023

updated onOctober 4, 2023

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The best way to compress multiple files, for many users, is still archiving them. And for that, many prefer the ZIP format. However, there is a misconception that archive files cannot get corrupted.

In this guide, we will share with you some methods that will help you understand how to open a corrupt archive file on your Windows PC. Let us get right into it.

How do archive files get corrupted?

There are multiple reasons why an archive file may get corrupt and cause issues for the users to open it. Some of them are listed below:

Let us now take a look at the solutions that will help you how to open a corrupt archive.

How to open a corrupt archive?

Before starting the actual troubleshooting, see if you can download the archive from the source once again.

If the file was received via email, you should ask the sender to send the ZIP file again or ask the person to create a new ZIP file from scratch.

1. Use WinRAR to repair the archive

You can use the WinRAR software to fix corrupt archives and hopefully be able to open the files that are stored on them. This built-in repair function is known to fix corrupt files, but the results may vary based on the severity of the corruption of the archive file.

2. Force extract the files

WinRAR also gives you the option to keep the broken files and continue with the extraction process. This has often helped our readers to fix corrupt archive files and open them without any issues.

3. Use repair tools

There is software for everything these days, and you will find multiple programs that claim to help you repair broken or corrupt archive files.

If WinRAR doesn’t produce desired results, then we would suggest you take a look at our guide that lists some of thebest tools to fix corrupt archive filesin Windows.

Data corruption is a common thing and can be frustrating if you are dealing with a huge number of files. Archive files although let you store multiple files together, they can also often get corrupt. In that case, the tools to fix them could be handy.

4. Use an online ZIP repair utility

This is a paid option and may not be preferable for many. However, this has done its job and helped users recover corrupt archive files.

That is it from us in this guide. If you are unable toextract a ZIP file on your Windows PC, then you should apply the steps mentioned in our guide to resolve the problem.

Feel free to drop a comment below and let us know which method helped you with your query on how to open a corrupt archive.

How to Force-Open a Corrupt Archive#

How do archive files get corrupted?#

How to open a corrupt archive?#

1. Use WinRAR to repair the archive#

2. Force extract the files#

3. Use repair tools#

4. Use an online ZIP repair utility#