Extracting Files From an Archive

To extract files from the archive, choose Actions->Extract to... or click on Extract button in the toolbar. This will open Extract dialog shown in Figure 3. This dialog is explained in detail in the section called Extract Dialog.

You can also extract only some of the files in the archive. To do so, select the files you want to extract in the main File Roller window before clicking on Extract button. For example, you can extract a single file from the archive.

Please note that extracting files from the archive does not change the archive file. File Roller leaves the archive file unchanged. If you no longer need the archive file, you can delete it manually by choosing File->Delete Archive.

Extracted files will have the same permissions and modification time as the original ones, no matter when you extracted them.

Extract Dialog

Figure 3. Extract Dialog

This dialog contains the following options:

Extract to

This field shows the directory to which the files should be extracted. You can use Browse button to select a directory; you can also select one of recently used directories from the drop-down list or double-clcik on one of directories in Favorites Extraction Directories list.

Please note that by default, File Roller reconstructs the directory structure when extracting. Thus, if you selected /home/sasha in Extract to field, and your archive contains subdirectory doc, then the contents of this subdirectory will be extracted to /home/sasha/doc.

Favorites Extraction Directories

In this field, you can add directories which you frequently use for extraction. To extract to one of directories in the favorites list, double-clcik on it. To add directory currently shown in Extract To field to the list of favorites, click Add to favorites. To remove a directory from the list of favorites, select it with the mouse and click Remove button.

Files

This option allows you to select files to extract. Possible options are All Files (extracts all files in the archive), Selected Files, and Files. The last option extracts files matching the pattern you enter. As usual, the pattern may use wildcards * and ?.

Recreate directories

If this option is selected (default), then extraction will recreate the directory structure, creating subdirectories as needed. If this option is not selected, all files in the acrhive (including those in subdirectories) will be extracted to the target directory; no subdirectories will be created.

Overwrite existing files and Do not extract older files

These two options control behavior of File Roller when the target directory already contains a file or subdirectory with the same name as the one being extracted.

If Overwrite existing files is unselected, then existing files will not be overwritten, so File Roller will not extract files which are already present in target directory.

If Overwrite existing files is selected and Do not extract older files is unselected, then File Roller will extract all files from the archive, overwriting already existing files in the target directory if necessary. This is the default behavior.

If both Overwrite existing files and Do not extract older files are selected, then File Roller will overwrite existing files only if the file being extracted is newer than the existing file. File Roller uses last modification date to determine which file is newer.