7-Zip is a free program that manages multiple compressed file formats.

Compressed files are used to group a set of files and directories into a single file and reduce the size that would occupy the group of files and directories. It doesn't matter if we know how a compressed file works; at some point, we will need to create a compressed file or manipulate an existing file. That is why it is essential to have a tool that can compress and decompress multiple compressed file formats.

7-Zip emerges as an alternative to paid compressors programs, offering very similar characteristics and allowing the management of multiple compressed file formats. The program can decompress the vast majority of compression formats available in the market. Some formats it can decompress are ZIP, RAR, ARJ, GZIP, CAB, ISO, LZH, and more. In addition, the program can create compressed files of the following formats: ZIP, TAR, GZIP, WIM, XZ, BZIP2, and XZ.
The program has its compression format, whose name is 7z, which obviously can be compressed and uncompressed with 7zip.

We can use the program's graphical interface or Windows explorer's "Context Menu" when clicking the right mouse button on any file.
In the context menu, we can access the most common operations, such as file extraction, extracting the file into a directory, compressing the file, compressing it and sending it by e-mail, adding to an already existing zip file, and more. This is a quick way to manipulate compressed files, allowing us to avoid accessing the program's main screen to perform basic actions.
We will show all available operations in different menus when we access the main window. In addition, to compress and decompress, we will be able to perform the following actions:

• Split and merge files: this option allows splitting large files into smaller portions. We can default split files into parts of 10MB, 650MB, 700MB, 4480MB, or 1.44 MB. However, we can define any other size. The resulting files have the extensions .001, .002, etc. We can join these fragments together again with 7-Zip.
• File operations: we can perform functions on files, such as renaming, copying, moving, and deleting.
• Performance test: this option launches a test of compression and decompression that test the computer's performance and displays the speed (KB/s) with which our PC can compress and decompress.

When we create a compressed file, we have multiple options for creating a compressed file: file format, compression level, compression type, number of threads, CPU, number of fragments, creating an auto-extract file (SFX), password encryption, and more.
In this way, we will be able to create compressed files that are adapted to the situation required; for example: create a compressed file, split it into several parts, which we will upload to the Internet for sharing with other users, or create a password-protected compressed file, that contains private data, and send it to a friend by mail.