What is an ACE file? Learn about ACE files here

An ACE file is a compressed archive file, which means that it is a single file that inside can contain one or more files that have been reduced in size. This is done to ease and speed up distribution over the Internet and to save storage space.

ACE file details

An ACE file is a type of compressed archive which is created by the WinACE utility.

The ACE compression format was created in the late 1990s by a programmer named Marcel Lemke, and later bought by e-merge GmbH. The format is now kept closed (proprietary), and that is why other compression tools cannot create ACE files but only extract data from them.

The ACE format is not very widely used today, even though e-merge claims that it offers better compression ratios and faster compression than the popular ZIP format.

Opening ACE files

If you have an ACE file on your computer and want to open it, then you will need a tool like BitZipper.

Technical details

If you are looking for technical details and the complete history of the .ACE file format, please refer to this Wikipedia article.