An ARH file can represent different formats depending on origin, so the best way to identify it is by checking context; many ARH files come from Siemens ProTool—older industrial HMI software—where they act as compressed project packages for storing or backing up HMI work, making this likely if the file came from factory equipment, PLC/HMI technicians, or folders mentioning Siemens, ProTool, WinCC, STEP7, S7, or HMI, while in other cases ARH refers to an ArheoStratigraf project used in archaeology for documenting stratigraphy and building diagrams like a Harris Matrix, which fits if the file came from excavation records or folders labeled contexts, trench, stratigraphy, matrix, or layers.

To determine what kind of ARH file you’re dealing with, the easiest direct check is opening it in 7-Zip or WinRAR, since certain ARH formats are archive containers; if it opens and reveals directories or internal files, you can extract and inspect items like project folders, config data, images, or database files—usually pointing toward a packaged project format such as Siemens/ProTool—whereas if 7-Zip reports an error, the ARH may still be intact but proprietary and meant for its original program, with an extra trick being to duplicate the file and rename it to `. If you treasured this article therefore you would like to obtain more info with regards to advanced ARH file handler generously visit our own page. zip` or `.rar` to see if it decompresses, and ultimately if your aim is just retrieving assets the extracted contents may suffice, but full viewing or editing requires the software that created it.

Because many ARH files act like containerized project archives, attempting to open them with 7-Zip or WinRAR can immediately show whether they’re actual archives; if successful, you’ll see project folders, configs, images, or logs that tell you what software produced it, and you can extract the content without the original tool, while a failure simply means the ARH is proprietary, and renaming a duplicate to `.zip` or `.rar` may expose a hidden archive, making this a quick way to identify and potentially recover what’s inside.

An ARH file cannot be reliably identified by extension alone since “.ARH” is a reused, non-standard extension; determining its type depends on its origin—industrial automation environments use ARH for packaged HMI/PLC projects, and archaeology uses it for ArheoStratigraf data—and checking whether it extracts in 7-Zip helps confirm if it’s an archive or proprietary.

In real use, “.ARH” functions more as a label than a format, allowing different software to assign it to unrelated data; thus an automation-sourced ARH might be a Siemens/ProTool HMI package containing screens, configurations, alarms, and tag databases, while an archaeology-sourced ARH could be an ArheoStratigraf project with stratigraphy links and diagram information, and similar filenames may mask these differences, so identifying it requires checking context and testing with tools like 7-Zip to distinguish between an archive and a proprietary project.

You can often identify an ARH file by looking at the *context it’s stored in*—neighboring filenames, folder themes, and domain clues—because the suffix alone doesn’t define the internal format; ARH files near automation-related items like Siemens, ProTool, WinCC, STEP7/S7, PLC, HMI, or engineering project versions are generally Siemens ProTool archives, while ARH files in archaeology directories referencing trench, context, stratigraphy, matrix, or layers and surrounded by site photos or context sheets usually belong to ArheoStratigraf, and testing with 7-Zip helps confirm whether it’s a container or a proprietary project.