Thanks for helping Lappy!

No problem! I spent quite a bit of time dealing with the 7-zip command line, for the purposes of making my own batch files in order to automate backups.

Learning and effectively using 7za.exe is terrific!

I need help with the following and I appreciate if you can help me out.

Let say you have one file (*.txt) on your desktop which gets updated every month using a different name. In this case I want 7zip to create an archive every month using whatever name the file has. Can this be done?

7za.exe a *.7z “C:\Users\Ryan\Desktop\*.txt”

Yes that concept works. You can use an asterisk in place of a filename in order to specify a certain file extension. However, please be aware there are a couple of catches (see here):

1) You cannot use the *.* form of a wildcard. You have to simply use a single *
2) If you chose to use certain specific archive compressions (i.e., .7z), you’ll have to use the “-ms=off” switch (disable solid mode) in order to be able to later add files to that archive.

You also may want to use the “u” command in place of the “a” command. This will guarantee that the newest version of any existing files will be updated.

In short, it should look something like this:
7za.exe u -tzip “c:\location_of_archive\archive.zip” “c:\location_of_files\*.txt”

I strongly recommend you consult the help file (7-zip.chm - seen in the screencap in the article) included in the downloaded 7za zip file for all the details about command line usage.

Let say you have one file (*.txt) on your desktop which gets updated every month using a different name. In this case I want 7zip to create an archive every month using whatever name the file has. Can this be done?

7za.exe a *.7z “C:\Users\Ryan\Desktop\*.txt”

Very useful if you want to use other compression methods.

Very useful, Ryan! Stumbled and del.icio.us’ed! I have been looking to automate my document backups in my laptop. Combine this with FileHamster, I can automatically move the backed up zip files to my pen drive anytime I plug that in!

Hadn’t heard of FileHamster before, but it looks like a real gem. We’ll have to write about that.

Very useful, Ryan! Stumbled and del.icio.us’ed! I have been looking to automate my document backups in my laptop. Combine this with FileHamster, I can automatically move the backed up zip files to my pen drive anytime I plug that in!

TERRIFIC IDEA (Ryan and K-IntheHouse)!!

Additionally, if you’re interested in a portable version that may be a little more inline with everyday use (e.g., non-command line), try 7-zip Portable, brought to you by the people over at PortableApps.com: http://portableapps.com/apps/u.....p_portable