Create An Exe File For Mac
How To Open Exe Files Mac
Sometimes you encounter a file on the Net which is compressed as a self-extracting zip-file for Windows only. Its file extension is '.exe'. But you HAVE to have its contents, and you just can't open that.exe file! For instance, a PDF manual from Canon's site - they tell you to open it with Acrobat, but they made it an exe, saving just 0.2 MB. Well, there is a 'dirty' way to open it. Just rename the file extension to '.zip' (and confirm the dialog), and open it with Stuffit Expander.
It doesn't work with Panther's built-in zip-extractor ( BOMArchiveHelper) - so don't double-click the file, but choose 'Open with Stuffit Expander' from the contextual menu (control-click on the file). I tested this with Stuffit Expander 7.0.3, but my guess is that you can use almost any version. You can also use the command-line utility unzip in Terminal - in that case, you don't even have to rename the file.
A simple unzip thisfile.exe is enough to get things going. I believe this command comes with Panther, but I'm not sure. Either way, you can obtain it from the package called 'zip.' I also never thought of this. I tried the drag and drop method and it just didn't do anything, and deluxe just said 'what the heck am I supposed to do with this???'
I tried it on some files that caused deluxe to hiccup previously and they extracted no problem. The.exe's you are referring to are self extracting zip archives. Just a.zip with a code stub of winzip (or another util) attached so it can extract the files from the.zip archive.
It's basically the equivalent of using stuffit to create a self extracting archive in case someone doesn't have stuffit installed on their mac. Though I doubt there's any mac user anywhere who doesn't have at least one copy of stuffit expander installed on some drive somewhere.:-) The other.exes are probably just plain old applications, and all sorts of weirdness can happen with those. They really should use some other extension for self extracting.zip archives to help us cut down on the confusion.;-).