To open an archive file, choose File->Open Archive (Ctrl-O), or click Open button in the toolbar. The Open File dialog is displayed. Select the file that you want to open, then click OK. File Roller will automatically determine archive type and and show its contents in the main window. You can also use Open button on the toolbar, or drag a file from another application such as a file manager.
If you try to open an archive file format that File Roller does not recognize, the application displays an error message.
If the archive file is very large, or you have a slow system, the operation of opening the archive can take significant time. If you want to abort this operation, press Esc key or click Stop button in the toolbar.
Once you have opened an archive, its contents is shown in File Roller main window (see Figure 1).
This window shows the list of all files and directories in the archive, with their names, types, modification dates and other information. Size field shows uncompressed size, i.e. the size the file would have if you extracted it from the archive. Modifed filed shows the date this file was last modified.
In addition, archive name is shown in window titlebar, and total number of files and size of the archive (uncompressed - i.e., the total size these fiels would have after extracting) is shown at the bottom of the window.
If the archive contains subdirectories, you can choose one of two possible ways to show its contents, Directory View and File View. You can switch between these views using Options menu.
In Directory View (default), the subdirectories are shown in the same way as in a file manager. That is, for each subdirectory the list shows the folder icon and the subdirectory name. To view the contents of a subdirectory, double-click on it. To go up one level in the directory tree, click on the Up button in the toolbar. In this view, the toolbar also contains Location field, which shows the full pathname of the currently shown directory.
In the File View, all files in the archive - including those in subdirectories - are shown in a flat list.
File Roller allows you to customize the way files are shown as follows:
Switching between Directory View and File View - see the section called Directory View and File View.
Selecting the columns to show (Name, Type, Size, etc) - see the section called Preferences Dialog.
Selecting the order of files in the list. You can have the files sorted by name, size, etc. To switch between these orderings, choose Options->Sort File List. Alternatively, you can just click on the heading of the corresponding column; for example, to have files sorted by modification date (earliest to latest), click on Modified heading. Clicking on the heading again reverses the order (in this case, it will order the files latest to earliest).