Tuesday, July 3, 2012

How to open a .webarchive file type

After 15 minutes of trying to figure out how to open a .webarchive file type on my Windows computer I realized that the internet could use a simple, step by step description of what to do to view this file. I will deal specifically with opening a .webarchive file on Windows 7, but the process is pretty close on Windows XP too.

Steps to open a .webarchive file on Windows 7:
  1. If you do not already have Apple's Safari browser, you will need to download and install it. This is because .webarchive files are a type of file saved by the Safari application, and to my knowledge only the Safari application is able to open them again. Head to Apple's website, find the option to download Safari, download it, and then install it.
  2. You will need to save the file to your computer. This gets tricky because if you're downloading the file from the internet (say as an email attachment) Internet Explorer will try to open the file itself, but it just pops a blank tab after it realizes it doesn't know what to do. On my Windows 7 machine, it pops a dialog at the bottom of the browser window, asking if I want to open or save the file. You need to save it somewhere on you computer.
  3. Open the locally saved .webarchive file with Safari. Find your .webarchive file, right click on it and choose "open with." Then you'll have to browse through your machine's programs and choose Safari as the application you want to open it with. Once you have it open, you should see a saved image of whatever the file contained.
That's it! It took me a good 15 minutes to figure this out, and I imagine there are some folks out there who could use some directions on this. If you find that this method does not work for you or you would like to add any additional information in the comments please do so.

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