If you use your computer on a regular basis, you certainly know the necessity of having a good file compression tool. These days, many developers try to reduce the burden on their servers by archiving their software with popular compression utilities.

A good compression tool is necessary if you want to compress a file and protect it with a password before sending it to someone through a web service.

Even though a number of free tools have come up over the past couple of years, WinRAR is still the best file compression software out there. It certainly offers better compression ratio when compared to its competitors and is being updated on regular basis.

Just like any other file compression tool, WinRAR integrates itself into Windows Explorer (File Explorer) context menu (right-click) menu. But unlike 7-Zip, WinRAR adds several entries to the context menu, making the beautiful context menu a little cluttered. The problem here is that cascading menu isn’t enabled by default and you need to enable the same after installing WinRAR. 7-Zip, for instance, shows only the 7-Zip entry in the main context menu by default and you need to select it in order to see all items.

When you install WinRAR, it adds the following items to the context menu:

Extract files

Extract here

Extract to <folder>

Extract each archive to separate folder

Open with WinRAR (for SFX archive)

Add to archive

Add to

Compress to and email

Compress and email

Even though, I have been using WinRAR for years, I make it a point to add only necessary options to the context menu while installing the program. Towards the end the installation, WinRAR setup offers you a dialog box where you can select the items that you would like see in the context menu.

Remove unnecessary items from context menu

If you already have installed WinRAR and now want to remove some of its items from the context menu and make the context menu clutter free, here is how to do it.

Step 1: Open WinRAR software. To do this, you can type WinRAR in Start menu or Start screen and then press the enter key.

Step 2: Once WinRAR is launched, click Options and then click Settings to open the Settings dialog.

Step 3: Switch to the Integration tab and then click Context menu items.

Step 4: Now uncheck the items that you don’t want to see in the context menu and finally, click OK button. That’s it!

Enable cascading context menu in WinRAR to reduce the clutter:

Step 1: Open WinRAR, navigate to Options and then Settings.

Step 2: Move to the Integration tab and then enable the option labelled Cascaded context menus. That’s it!