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Windows Cabinet Compressed Archive
File type: Game file, Archive and compressed file
A cab file extension is commonly used for compressed archives found in Microsoft Windows operating system.
Found 2 different file type records with the same cab filename suffix.
File type category:
Game file
Archive and compressed file
Date updated: July 19, 2025
The cab file extension is used for native compressed archive format used in Microsoft Windows. Also known as Cabinet files.
CAB supports compression and digital signing, and is used by a variety of Microsoft installation engines, such as Setup API, Device Installer, AdvPack (for the installation of ActiveX components from Internet Explorer) and Windows Installer.
The cab file format works with three data compression methods:
The cab files are also used in many installers (InstallShield and others), although it is mostly completely different format. Sometimes are used in computer games.
The cab archives can be created with command-line tool included in Windows called: makecab.exe
Some modern archiving tools, like WinRAR, 7-zip and many others, are able to open and extract contents of *.cab files.
CAB archives can be usually repacked to other archives. However doing so may make them unusable in their original program, specially if they were used for installation purposes.
Software applications that can open cab files:
Apple macOS / Mac OS X
Linux/Unix
Software apps that extract cab files:
Microsoft Windows
Apple macOS / Mac OS X
Linux/Unix
Software apps that recover cab files:
Microsoft Windows
File type category:
Archive and compressed file
Mobile phones related file
Date updated: May 2, 2018
Record marked as obsolete and not updated for a long time.
The cab file format was also used as a standard installation mechanism in Windows CE powered devices, but it differs from the standard Windows archive.
The CAB file format is similar to classical cab, but also contains special set of installation instructions in XML file bundled to the archive called _setup.xml.
Over the years the CAB format developed and many versions of it exist. Those usually work only on certain version of Windows CE. This situation was solved with Windows CE version 5.0 in which the CAB format used for app installations for standardized.
You can open and install the app included in the *.cab file in Windows CE based mobile phones.
These files could be extracted with special tools for Windows CE. But conversion is unlikely.
Software applications that can open cab files:
Microsoft Windows
Software apps that extract cab files:
Microsoft Windows
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