How to extract a .cab file without Winzip?

July 26, 2018 2:41 PM

So, my work computer has windows 10, and doesn't have WinZip. I have a .cab file from which I need to extract the source files in their original folder structure. Help?

I can click on the cab file in question, and the Win10 "Extract" menu is available but every option within it is grayed out. The right click menu will let me "Send To > Zipped Document", but there's no "Extract to" option.
Google tells me to use Winzip, but I don't have Winzip and I'm not sure I'm allowed to install it on the work PC.

It's utterly not OK to move the file to a personal device to extract it.

Any other ideas?

posted by janell to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

That's odd that Windows can't handle it, because cab is a Windows format. Anyway, can you rename the file to .zip? That might convince Windows to try harder.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 2:44 PM on July 26, 2018

7-zip will also work, but you probably don't have that either. Have you double clicked on it?
posted by soelo at 2:46 PM on July 26, 2018

Response by poster: If I doubleclick on it, I can get to the files, but there's no internal folder structure, and the other script that needs these files as inputs doesn't accomodate that (and I'm not allowed to edit that script.)
posted by janell at 2:53 PM on July 26, 2018

Best answer: I use PeaZip portable at work, which also doesn't require an install and is free.

http://www.peazip.org/peazip-portable.html
posted by matsho at 4:03 PM on July 26, 2018

Best answer: 7zip is a free download and can extract .CAB files.
posted by Greg_Ace at 4:33 PM on July 26, 2018

Best answer: I'm a bit confused. Does your script need to be able to extract the files from the command line, or do you just need to be able to extract the files inside the CAB file yourself? If you can open the CAB file in Explorer to see its contents (which you should be able to on Win10), then you can treat the files inside pretty much like a normal file and copy it to another folder outside of it (either using drag & drop or copy & paste).

Alternately, you should be able to use the built-in expand.exe command-line utility to extract the files.
posted by Aleyn at 4:34 PM on July 26, 2018

Best answer: Alternatively, if you aren't allowed to install 7zip: How to extract CAB File using command line tools in Windows.
posted by Greg_Ace at 4:34 PM on July 26, 2018

Why would you need cab files if you can't install software on your work PC?

I would second 7zip.
posted by cjorgensen at 4:59 AM on July 27, 2018

Response by poster: Thanks, all! So after asking around, some of my colleagues have WinZip and others have 7Zip on their work-issued computers, so I must have just gotten a weird build... and both are available in our internal SW "store" so I'm golden.
So thanks for pointing me towards the obvious, as well as providing some helpful other strategies.

To answer cjorgensen's question: The cab files are generated as the 'configuration backup' and 'audit' documents by/for some specialized equipment. I'm needing to run a particular audit script. The owner of said script, when asked, said they dump the files on yet a third, older, computer to extract them just the way they wrote the script to accommodate and since they have a solution the rest of us just have to find a way to deal. GRAR.

Anyway, thanks!
posted by janell at 8:58 AM on July 27, 2018