What is an ARJ file? Learn about ARJ files here

An ARJ 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 often done to ease and speed up distribution over the Internet and to save storage space.

ARJ file details

An ARJ file is a compressed file format which was created by Robert Jung of ARJ software. ARJ actually stands for "Archived by Robert Jung" and was created in 1990. ARJ was a very popular compression format, and while not as popular as PKZIP, it was seen as a capable compression format.

ARJ was seen as superior to the early versions of PKZIP in the fact that it compressed files more efficiently, however because it was slower it never gained the same popularity as PKZIP. Nowadays few people use ARJ files to compress their data.

ARJ reached the height of its popularity during the days of early networks. This was because of advanced features making it much easier to split up an archive into smaller chunks. It was still possible to do this with earlier versions of PKZIP, however many users found that the methods of doing it were unintuitive and confusing.

There was never an official graphical interface released for ARJ. It was only available through a command prompt. This could be why people stopped using the format.

Opening ARJ files

If you have an ARJ 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 .ARJ file format, please refer to this Wikipedia article.