How do I open a .tar file?

Question

I am trying to open a .tar file and cannot figure out how.

Please Help!

Winzip is not working and I have downloaded 2 different programs with no avail yet!

It asks me what program do I want to open the file in?

Answer 1

WinRar will open .tar files.

http://www.rarlab.com/

Answer 2

In computing, the tar (file) format (derived from tape archive) is a type of archive bitstream or file format. The format is traditionally produced by the Unix command, tar, and was standardized by POSIX.1-1998 and later POSIX.1-2001. Initially developed as a raw format, used for tape backup and other sequential access devices for backup purposes, it is now commonly used to collate collections of files into one larger file, for distribution or archiving, while preserving file system information such as user and group permissions, dates, and directory structures.

tar's linear roots can still be seen in its ability to work on any data stream and its slow partial extraction performance, as it has to read through the whole archive to extract only the final file. A tar file (somefile.tar), when subsequently compressed using a compression utility such as gzip, bzip or formerly, compress, produces a compressed tar file with a filename extension indicating the type of compression (e.g.: somefile.tar.gz). A .tar file is commonly referred to as a tarball, which may be compressed or not.

As is common with Unix utilities, tar is a single specialist program. It follows the Unix philosophy in that it can "do only one thing" (archive), "but do it well". tar is most commonly used in tandem with an external compression utility, since it has no built-in data compression facilities. These compression utilities generally only compress a single file, hence the pairing with tar, which can produce a single file from many files. To ease this common usage, the BSD and GNU versions of tar support the command line options -z (gzip), -j (bzip2), and -Z (compress), which will compress or decompress the archive file it is currently working with, although even in this case the (de)compression is still actually performed by an external program. Compression is sometimes avoided because of the greatly amplified potential for damage to data in long term storage.

you can open the *.tar file by using the software below

^Mac OS platform
Allume Systems Stuffit Expander

^Windows platform
Allume Systems Stuffit Expander
ALTools AlZip
WinZip
PicoZIP
WinACE

^Linux platform
tar

Answer 3

Download WinRAR for Windows
http://www.rarlab.com/

or Stuffit expander on Mac works

Answer 4

You need to download WinAce or WinRar software to open .tar files.Good Luck.

Answer 5

I use Winrar. Got it here: http://bitly.com/1p3PZLF
The best program to decompress files is Winrar, you can unzip all kind of files!(.zip, .rar, .7z, .iso, .tar, .jar, .cab, .gz, .ace, .uue, .bz2, etc...)
Bye

Answer 6

In linux type:

tar -xf filename.tar

In windows:

Dowload tar for windows and do the same from a MS-DOS console

Answer 7

You can use WinRAR to open ".tar" files.

You can download WinRAR here:
http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Utilities/Compression_and_Zip_File_Utilities/WinRAR_Download.html

Answer 8

some good links....... have a look....