How to unzip a file in Powershell?

Question

I have a .zip file and need to unpack its entire content using Powershell. I\'m doing this but it doesn\'t seem to work:

$shell = New-Object -Co         


        

Answer 1

For those, who want to use Shell.Application.Namespace.Folder.CopyHere() and want to hide progress bars while copying, or use more options, the documentation is here:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/shell/folder-copyhere

To use powershell and hide progress bars and disable confirmations you can use code like this:

# We should create folder before using it for shell operations as it is required
New-Item -ItemType directory -Path "C:\destinationDir" -Force

$shell = New-Object -ComObject Shell.Application
$zip = $shell.Namespace("C:\archive.zip")
$items = $zip.items()
$shell.Namespace("C:\destinationDir").CopyHere($items, 1556)

Limitations of use of Shell.Application on windows core versions:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/server-core/what-is-server-core

On windows core versions, by default the Microsoft-Windows-Server-Shell-Package is not installed, so shell.applicaton will not work.

note: Extracting archives this way will take a long time and can slow down windows gui