--- title: "Extract ARJ Online — Open DOS-Era Archives | Compress Pro" description: "Open ARJ archives in your browser — the DOS-era format of BBS downloads and floppy backups. Files extract locally; nothing is ever uploaded." canonical: https://compress-pro.com/extract-arj --- # Extract ARJ archives. > Open ARJ archives in your browser — DOS-era files freed. ARJ compressed half the BBS scene and a generation of floppy backups before ZIP took the crown. The files still exist; the tooling mostly does not. Drop an .arj here and **its contents extract right in your browser** — old family backups included. **No uploads · No ads · Free & open source.** ## How it works 1. Drop files anywhere on the page, click to browse, or paste with Ctrl/⌘ + V. 2. Pick a quality or preset — or set an exact target size and let the tool find it. 3. Compress, compare before/after, and download — individually or as a ZIP. ## Digital archaeology, in a tab ARJ sits alongside [LHA](https://compress-pro.com/extract-lha) and early ZIP in most retro collections — all three open here. Once rescued, files worth keeping deserve a modern container: [7Z with AES](https://compress-pro.com/create-7z) for private archives, [ZIP](https://compress-pro.com/zip-files) for anything meant to be shared. ## Frequently asked questions ### Why would I have ARJ files in 2026? Old backups, BBS-era downloads, shareware CDs and files inherited from a DOS machine. ARJ was mainstream from roughly 1991 to 1995 — anything archived then has decent odds of wearing this extension. ### Are multi-volume ARJ sets (.a01, .a02) supported? No — split sets were designed for floppy spanning and need every volume joined in order. Single .arj files, which is what most surviving archives are, extract fine. ### Is the extraction faithful to the original bytes? Yes — ARJ stored CRCs per file and the decoder verifies them, so what comes out is exactly what went in three decades ago, or you get an error instead of silent corruption. ### Is it private? Yes. The archive is opened and unpacked on your own device — its contents are never uploaded, and a password, if one is needed, is used locally and never transmitted. The server does nothing but deliver this page. Want proof? Run one file through, switch your connection off, and run another — it still works. ## Related tools - [Extract LHA/LZH archives](https://compress-pro.com/extract-lha) - [Create 7Z archives](https://compress-pro.com/create-7z) - [Zip & Unzip files](https://compress-pro.com/zip-files) --- Part of [Compress Pro](https://compress-pro.com/) — every tool page has a markdown twin at `.md`. Full tool index: [llms.txt](https://compress-pro.com/llms.txt)