Opening Archive Files

You can open and browse archive files in the panels as if they were normal directories. Focus the archive file and press Enter or double-click it. Also see Changing Directory for other ways to open (change directory to) an archive file, mainly Commands/Change Directory (Shift+F7) and Edit/Paste (Ctrl+V).

Once you have opened an archive file, you can work with the files and directories in it. Focus or select them and use Open, View, Edit, Copy (in both directions, pack and unpack), Move (it works like pack and delete), Delete, Copy to and Paste from clipboard (in both directions, pack and unpack), Compare Directories, Calculate Directory Sizes, and other commands (see the menu for enabled commands). You can also use commands from the context menu (right-click or Shift+F10).

The View, Edit, and Open commands unpack the focused file from the archive to a temporary directory. The unpacked file is then opened in the Viewer or Editor, or through system associations (note: if you want to start an application from an archive file, you need to unpack the whole archive to avoid problems with missing DLL libraries and other application files). When you change the path out of the archive file in the panel, Sally detects whether unpacked files in the temporary directory have changed (this applies only to the Edit and Open commands) and, if so, offers to update the archive (pack the changed files back into the archive file).

Opening Archive Files

See Also