# -p (set Password) switch

Specifies password.

#### Syntax

    -p{password}

{password}
  Specifies password.

If a password is specified, and if the command creates or updates some archive (zip or 7z archive), 7-Zip will encrypt the data of the files in archive. But metadata (file names, file sizes, timestamps and other headers) will be stored without encryption, unless the additional switch -mhe is specified. If you want to encrypt both the data and the file names in a 7z archive, you must specify two switches: -p{password} and -mhe.

Note: 7-Zip doesn't support encryption of metadata (file names) for zip archives.

If -p switch is used without a password, 7-zip will prompt for a password during execution.

#### Examples

    7z a -psecret archive.7z *.txt

compresses *.txt files to archive.7z using password "secret". File data will be encrypted, but file names will be stored without encryption.

    7z a -psecret -mhe archive.7z *.txt

compresses *.txt files to archive.7z using password "secret". File data and file names will be encrypted.

    7z x -psecret archive.zip

extracts all files from archive.zip using password "secret".

#### Commands that can be used with this switch

a (Add), d (Delete), e (Extract), rn (Rename), t (Test), u (Update), x (Extract with full paths)

#### See also

Switches: -mhe (Enables or disables archive header encryption)