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If I have an archive, for example, some.zip that contains one or more files, how can I extract only one file (I know the name of the file) with 7-Zip from the command line in Windows?

5 Answers 5

24

You just add the filename at the end.

7z e [archive.zip] -o [outputdir] [fileFilter]
4
  • 1
    How can I add multiple file filters, say .XML and .zip? Sorry if I'm hijacking this thread, I just didn't want to add a duplicate question.
    – Fr0zenFyr
    Jun 21, 2014 at 5:25
  • It's a different question @Fr0zenFyr. To make it clear that it is not duplicate, you can reference this question in your own, and then specify how yours is different. Jan 23, 2017 at 23:18
  • @music2myear: Thanks for clarification. Top voted answer by zionyx already includes a solution. My comment is over 2 years old, so it would be a reasonable guess to assume that I either used above solution or already posted a question and found an answer (BTW, this was my case). My resolved post is on SO and original thread created before my comment is here so I couldn't link to this question. :)
    – Fr0zenFyr
    Jan 25, 2017 at 10:00
  • 1
    Note : as it is written here, do not put space between -o and outputdir. Oct 25, 2019 at 9:38
57

As a follow-up to surfasb's answer, add a -r flag at the end to recurse:

7z e [archive.zip] -o[outputdir] [fileFilter] -r

Multiple filters support:

7z e [archive.zip] -o[outputdir] [fileFilter_1] [fileFilter_2] -r

Example:

Multiple filters command line:

7z e archive.zip -o outputdir *.xml *.dll -r

PS: I use 7za.exe instead of 7z.exe. This is the actual command I use in my script:

7za.exe x archive.zip -o outputdir *.xml *.pdb *.exe *.ocx *.dll -r
6
  • 2
    How can I add multiple file filters, say .XML and .zip? Sorry if I'm hijacking this thread, I just didn't want to add a duplicate question.
    – Fr0zenFyr
    Jun 21, 2014 at 5:25
  • 2
    Should be fine by separating the filters by space. See the edited answer above. :)
    – zionyx
    Aug 26, 2014 at 14:06
  • And how do I extract a specific file from an archive inside the archive? Lets say the file I'm looking for is "MyFile.txt" inside "SubArchive.zip" inside "MainArchive.zip". Is this possible?
    – PeterCo
    Oct 27, 2017 at 12:14
  • 1
    @PeterCo, I think the command is only capable to extract SubArchive.zip from the MainArchive.zip in your case. You may run a follow up command to extract MyFile.txt from SubArchive.zip after the initial extraction.
    – zionyx
    Jan 5, 2018 at 9:09
  • You also want to double-quote those wildcard filters, e.g. ".exe" or ".pdf". Without that, the filter will skip filenames with embedded space characters.
    – Dave Hein
    May 22, 2021 at 12:31
9

If you look at the man page for 7z you will find that the following command can be used to extract a file from a 7z archive (though the usage of path is missing from the man page):

7z x <archive> <path to file>

Examples:

7z x backup.7z *.html
7z x backup.7z folderwithin/myfile.html

Alternatively you could use e.

The command line version users guide seems to have more information on the actual usage.

2
  • 2
    Is that the relative path within the archive? Jan 23, 2017 at 23:18
  • Yes, the "folderwithin" is a folder at the root of the archive. Oct 25, 2019 at 8:37
4

Note that 7z has the following syntax (observe the spaces and quotes surrounding the "-oMy Folder" option to set the output folder name, took me hours to figure out, as I originally did this – the wrong way: * -o "My Folder" *):

7z e "my zip.zip" "-oMy Folder" *.jpg "all of these.*" -r
1
  • Thank you so much.
    – Ali
    May 29, 2020 at 16:14
1

I found that on zsh command line, with 7-zip 16.06, that I had to put double-quotes around the wildcard filter argument. For example, this did not find any PDF files to extract:

7z e "archive has pdf in subdirectory.zip" -r *.pdf

but quoting the wildcard filter did find and extract the PDF file that was in a subdirectory of the zip archive, like this:

7z e "archive has pdf in subdirectory.zip" -r "*.pdf"

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