Click the "Select File" button above, and choose your ZAR file.
You’ll see a preview, if available.
Click the "Convert file to..." button to extract text information.
Convert ZAR to another file type
To convert ZAR archives to another format, you need OpticStudio or other Compressed software.
Convert a file to ZAR
To convert other file formats to the "Proprietary Archive File" file type, you need software like OpticStudio or a similar tool.
About ZAR files
The .ZAR file extension most commonly represents an OpticStudio Archive, created by Ansys Zemax to package complex optical design data, glass catalogs, and lens models into a single container. However, the .ZAR format is highly fragmented. It is also used as a game asset archive for titles like The Legend of Zelda (Nintendo), games running on the Crystal Dynamics engine, or Codename: Panzers - Cold War. Additionally, it acts as a data recovery image for Zero Assumption Recovery software, a JBoss Service Archive, or a ZD Soft Screen Recorder project file. The main disadvantage of .ZAR files is their proprietary and highly context-dependent nature. Without the exact source software, like an expensive Ansys subscription or a specific game engine, these files are locked and unreadable. They are not natively supported by modern operating systems or web browsers. If you have a JBoss or ZAR recovery file, the data is often just disguised ZIP, RAR, or GZIP compression. But if you have an OpticStudio or proprietary game archive, the data structure is closed. Because of this fragmentation, you cannot simply convert a .ZAR file to a standard document. The best approach is to extract the contents to standard archive formats like .ZIP or .7Z. Standard online converters usually fail to process .ZAR files because they do not know which variant they are handling. This is a closed, proprietary format that is difficult to open. We will inspect the file headers, show underlying text or internal content, and extract the embedded data if a supported underlying archive format is detected.
Convert.Guru analyzes your ZAR file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
If you want to convert ZAR file to BWP, ZIP, RAR, 7Z, TAR, GZ, BZ2, XZ, LZMA, CAB, ACE or ARJ, you can use OpticStudio or similar software from the "Optical Design Data Archive" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert XXE, 7Z, Z, PAK, LHA, DEB, UUE, TAR, LZH, ZIP, PKG or RAR files to ZAR, try OpticStudio or another comparable tool in the "Optical Design Data Archive" category.
The ZAR Converter Story
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our ZAR converter.