How to Extract Contents of .MSI File and Add “Extract All” To the Right-Click Menu?

There are situations when you need to pick a single file from an .msi package without having to go through the installation phase. One good example is that a stand-alone or portable application wrapped in a .msi package. In this scenario, you can avoid running the setup and extract the contents of the .msi package manually. Thus there won’t be a need for a System Restore point, addition of several registry keys and a few directories (which would be the case if you run the setup).

No third-party tools are needed; you can do this using the Windows Installer executablemsiexec.exe command-line.

How to Extract the Contents of an .MSI File

I’ve got the ChristmasTheme .msi package downloaded from Microsoft site and would like to extract the background wallpaper from the package.

To extract the package, use the following command-line from the Run (WinKey + R) dialog:

msiexec /a "e:\downloads\ChristmasTheme.msi" /qb TARGETDIR="e:\downloads\theme files"

And here it is!

And the wallpaper image I was looking for is this, located under the Web\Wallpaper folder.

That’s how we extract the contents of an .msi file. To make this even easier, you can implement the command to your right-click menu (Context Menu)

Adding "Extract All" Right-Click Option for .MSI Files

Download msi-extract-all-menu.zip, unzip and run the REG file included in the archive. This adds "Extract All" option to the right-click menu for .msi files.

Clicking "Extract All" is all you need to do. It runs the msiexec.exe command-line in the background. As seen below, the package contents are extracted to a folder (with the same name as the source file, appended by the word "Files" ("ChristmasTheme.msi Files")