How to unzip a file using the cmd?

I want to make a BAT file that will ZIP or UNZIP a file. For zipping a file, I have found this question: Can you zip a file from the command prompt using ONLY Windows' built-in capability to zip files?

The answers given there are great and working for me, but I couldn't find any information about how to unzip the files. Like in the link, I can't assume any third-party tools (except winRAR).

Thanks ahead and sorry for English mistakes

6 Answers

This batch file code will help you to unzip a file.

@echo off setlocal cd /d %~dp0 Call :UnZipFile "C:\Temp\" "c:\FolderName\batch.zip" exit /b :UnZipFile <ExtractTo> <newzipfile> set vbs="%temp%\_.vbs" if exist %vbs% del /f /q %vbs% >%vbs% echo Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") >>%vbs% echo If NOT fso.FolderExists(%1) Then >>%vbs% echo fso.CreateFolder(%1) >>%vbs% echo End If >>%vbs% echo set objShell = CreateObject("Shell.Application") >>%vbs% echo set FilesInZip=objShell.NameSpace(%2).items >>%vbs% echo objShell.NameSpace(%1).CopyHere(FilesInZip) >>%vbs% echo Set fso = Nothing >>%vbs% echo Set objShell = Nothing cscript //nologo %vbs% if exist %vbs% del /f /q %vbs% 

N.B. C:\Temp is folder where it stores the Extracted (UnZip) File.

And, c:\FolderName\batch.zip is source path, (where Zip files are stored).

Please, Change the Full File Path ( Drive, Folder & Zip file name), according to your need.

On Windows 10 build 17063 or later you can use tar.exe (similar to the *nix one). This is also available in the nanoserver docker container

C:\> tar -xf archive.zip 

Note: zip support is not well documented

ref:

If you have Windows 10, you can use the much shorter Powershell equivalent

Expand-Archive -Force C:\path\to\archive.zip C:\where\to\extract\to 

If you have Windows 10 (and powershell), but still want to unzip from within .bat/.cmd-file (cmd.exe), you can use

powershell -command "Expand-Archive -Force '%~dp0my_zip_file.zip' '%~dp0'" 

where my_zip_file.zip is the file to be unzipped and %~dp0 points to the same folder are where the .bat/.cmd-file is (Change the folder, if needed).

ZipFile="C:\Users\spvaidya\Music\folder.zip" ExtractTo="C:\Users\spvaidya\Music\" 'If the extraction location does not exist create it. Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") If NOT fso.FolderExists(ExtractTo) Then fso.CreateFolder(ExtractTo) End If 'Extract the contants of the zip file. set objShell = CreateObject("Shell.Application") set FilesInZip=objShell.NameSpace(ZipFile).items objShell.NameSpace(ExtractTo).CopyHere(FilesInZip) Set fso = Nothing Set objShell = Nothing 

The following vbscript can be saved as file.vbs and then run using batch script like:

file.vbs 

save this in .bat file and run it.

I use this one-liner to extract all zip files in the current path to their own subdirectory based on their file name:

gci -Recurse -Filter *.zip |ForEach-Object {Expand-Archive -Path $_.Fullname -DestinationPath $_.BaseName -Force}