How to use the Extract 7Z
- Select the .7z file.
- Enter the password if the archive was encrypted.
- Click Extract and save files one by one, or grab them all as a ZIP.
Why 7Z is popular for document folders
The default LZMA2 method keeps a long memory of what it has already seen, and 7-Zip usually compresses the whole folder as one solid block. Repeated wording across many contracts, reports or log files is therefore stored only once, which is why a 7Z of such a folder often ends up a third to a half smaller than a ZIP of the same text-heavy folder.
That design costs memory on the way out. To reach any file in a solid archive, the stream has to be decoded from its start, and archives made at Ultra settings may need a large dictionary. Multi-gigabyte 7Z files can exhaust a phone browser; a desktop handles them far better.
Hidden file names and passwords
7-Zip encrypts with AES-256. If the creator ticked "encrypt file names", you will not even see the list of documents until the right password is entered. Otherwise the names show and only the contents are locked.
Passwords are case-sensitive and can include any Unicode character, so a correct-looking password that fails often comes down to keyboard layout or Caps Lock.
Where the files end up
Neither macOS Archive Utility nor the iPhone Files app reads 7Z out of the box. Opened here in Safari or Chrome, the extracted documents go to Downloads or to Files.
On Android, choose the archive straight from the folder where your messaging or mail app saved it; the results appear in the browser download list.
Questions
Which 7Z methods are supported?
LZMA and LZMA2, PPMd, BZip2, Deflate, uncompressed Copy entries, and the BCJ/BCJ2 executable filters. Archives from 7-Zip, PeaZip, Keka and p7zip are covered.
Can it open .7z.001 split parts?
No. Only a single archive file is read at a time, so split volumes need to be joined first or resent as one file.