To activate this dialog select "Settings…" command in Options menu and click on "Viewer" tab. The dialog contents are described below.
Viewer type
Selects default action, when the user presses Enter on a file.
Possible actions are:
| Internal viewer | Use the internal WinRAR viewer |
| External viewer | Use an external viewer. You should define the name in the "External viewer name" field |
| Associated program | Use default Windows viewer for file type |
| Ask | Ask the user for the desired viewer type each time after pressing Enter |
These settings are ignored for some file types. In the file management mode they are ignored for archives and executables. On Enter WinRAR always tries to open archives and to run exe files. In the archive management mode they are ignored for file types specified in "Unpack everything for" field of viewer settings dialog. If Enter is pressed on such file, WinRAR extracts the entire archive contents to a temporary folder, runs a file, waits for it to terminate, updates the source archive if necessary and then deletes the temporary folder and all of its contents. This provides the convenient method of installing applications directly from archives.
Unlike Enter, View file command always opens a file in the internal WinRAR viewer.
Internal viewer/Use DOS encoding
If internal viewer detects the file contents as Unicode UTF-8 or UTF-16 little endian, it selects these encodings automatically. For the rest of files, which are not detected as Unicode, the initial code page is set as Windows text if "Use DOS encoding" is off and as DOS text if this option on. It is also possible to change encoding of already opened file using "View as…" commands in internal viewer "View" menu.
Internal viewer/Reuse existing window
If this option is off, WinRAR creates a separate internal viewer window for each viewing file. When the option is on, the already existing window is reused, so only one instance of the viewer is opened.
Internal viewer/Word wrap
Switches between wrapping long strings and scrolling modes in the internal viewer. This option affects only new viewer windows, already opened are not changed.
Unpack everything for
Here you may define file masks which require unpacking of complete archive contents, when user presses Enter or double clicks an archived file matching one of these masks. Masks must be separated by spaces. For example, if this field contains *.exe *.htm *.html, WinRAR will unpack the complete archive before opening an archived executable or HTML file. This option is necessary for those file types, which need to access other archived files for proper executing or viewing.
WinRAR ignores "Viewer type" setting for file types defined in "Unpack everything for" field and always opens them using an associated program.
Ignore modifications for
By default, WinRAR proposes to update an archive if viewer modified an opened file or created any new files, but it is possible to disable such behavior. You can enter one or several file masks separated by spaces in "Ignore modifications for" field and WinRAR will not prompt to update an archive if file created or modified by viewer matches one of these masks.
For example, if this field contains *.doc *.txt, any .doc and .txt files modified or created by external or associated viewer, will be ignored and any changes made by user in such files while viewing them will be lost. If you wish to disable archive updating for all viewed files, use * mask.
Masks in this option can have more complex syntax, combining archive and file mask separated by two backslash characters: arcmask\\filemask. Masks can include the path, which limits archives or files to specified folder and its subfolders. You can use environment variables in the path. It is allowed to omit 'arcmask\\' or 'filemask' components if you wish to match all archives or all files.
For example, *.rar\\*.txt means all .txt files in all .rar archives, *\\temp\* or just temp\* matches all files in 'temp' folders inside of archives and %temp%\*\\* or %temp%\*\\ instructs the viewer to not update any archives in Windows temporary folder.
External viewer name
You may enter here the name of program, which will be used as viewer, if you set option "On Enter run external viewer". A name of the file to view will be passed to this program as a single parameter.