WinRAR may be used in one of two ways: in graphical shell mode with a standard Windows interface or in command line mode. To start the WinRAR shell simply double-click on the WinRAR icon. Then you can use buttons and menus for archiving and extracting. Read the topics below for step-by-step instructions.
To use WinRAR in the command line mode it is necessary to open, in the Start menu, either "Programs/Accessories/Command Prompt" or "Run�" window and enter the command text. You can find examples of simple commands for archiving and extracting in the topics below, but a more detailed description of the command line mode is given in the Command line mode help topic. Note that if you run WinRAR from the command line without parameters, the shell mode will be activated.
If you did not disable "Integrate WinRAR into shell" option when installing WinRAR, it is also possible to extract and archive files directly in Windows shell (Explorer or Desktop). Details may be found below.