Bandisoft has unveiled Bandizip 7.0 and Bandizip 7.0 Portable, a major new update of its Windows archiving tool.

The headline change is that Bandzip 7.0 now offers two paid-for versions (Professional and Enterprise) with extra features including password manager and recovery tools plus zip repair tool. The Standard version doesn’t lose any existing functionality but is now ad-supported.

The major new tools found in the paid-for editions of Bandzip include a password manager to allow users to generate and securely store long and complex passwords that can be used to protect sensitive data in archives. While accessible in the free edition, Standard users can only store a single password in the manager at a time.

The password manager is joined by password recovery (using brute-force) and zip archive repair tools, the latter capable of recovering some if not all data from partially corrupt files.

Professional and Enterprise users also gain the ability to view images inside archives or scan them for potential malware without decompressing the files. To display images as thumbnails, choose ‘View > File List > Large Icons’.

Other new features apply to all versions. They include an advanced Compression section under Settings. Also added is an option under Settings > General to ‘Single-click to open an item’. Users can also now navigate backwards and forwards through folders using Alt + left/right arrows.

Other changes include improvements to the command-line interface, including support for decompressing multiple archives at once using wildcards. Bandizip also widens its decompression support, with newly supported formats including Google Brotli and Facebook Zstandard.

Several bugs have been squashed, and users should be aware that self-extracting archives created in version 7 or later will no longer work with Windows XP.

Both Standard and Professional users must now use an online-only installer that ensures the latest version of the program is downloaded and installed; at the present time, Bandisoft has left the previous fully functional free version – 6.26 – available for download on its website.

Bandizip 7.0 and Bandizip 7.0 Portable are both available now for PCs running Windows Vista or later. The free Standard version is ad-supported, while Professional licenses cost $30 each. Enterprise users can purchase licenses for $20 per PC (minimum two licenses).