How to Backup/extract your .xap File From Windows Phone 7 & 8 To Your Pc

This post was last updated on October 16th, 2019 at 02:18 pm

You may want to ask, why should I back up my apps manually to my computer or other locations? After all, my apps will be intact anytime I upgrade my windows phone? Well by the time I give you just two reasons, you will know how important it is to manually backup your favourite .xap games or apps to your pc. In this post, I shall be explaining how to backup windows phone xap apps to pc. This tutorial is applicable to windows phone 7(all versions) and windows phone 8.

Must Read: How to install Apps in .XAP extensions on Windows phone 8/8.1-With or without SD cards

Reason to  Manually Backup Windows Phone 7 & 8 Apps to PC

1. First off, you cannot when your windows phone may encounter a software problem and crash. In such a situation, you will have no other choice than to repair your phone through Zune and if you do, you will lose all your data. And when you sync your phone to restore your files, your videos, contact and music will be restored but all your apps and games will be gone. Suffice to say that you may have to download everything all over again from marketplace.
2. Secondly, you are an ardent game lover, prior to formatting or upgrading your device, you need to save your apps including the progress/data and all to your pc so that after flashing your phone, you can easily reinstall the said apps with all the game progress
3. If you have a favourite app or game, you better back it up now because you may just wake up one day and discover that it is missing from windows phone market place just like advance explorer has been missing.

Now that you know the reason why you should extract and backup your .xap file, let me now take you through the simple process of doing this.

How to Extract/Backup .XAP Files on Windows Phones Using WP7 Advanced Explorer

• Wp7.AdvancedExplorer v1.4
• Install Advance Explorer and use  Advanced Explorer to  Go into “My Device/Applications/Install/”. Now, open every folder and take a look at the ” backround.jpg” until you find the icon of your app. Then send every file in the folder to your pc.
• once you have copied it all to your pc, highlight all and compress it as a zip file.
• Then rename the .zip to .xap

To restore the xap files when the time arrives, all you need to do is to follow the backup process in the reverse order. Simply rename the .xap app to .zip and extract it. After that, copy the entire folders to “My Device/Applications/Install/”. If you are asked if you want to overwrite, select yes.