FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

• How do I use WinSCP to upload and edit my web site?
• How do I change drive on the remote panel?
• Why can’t I edit more than one file with my external editor?
• Why can’t I change the owner and the group of a file?
• Why does selecting a file in WinSCP not work as I expect (that is, in the normal MS Windows way)?

• Where do I get a username and password?
• Why is WinSCP not able to connect to a server, when other clients are?
• How can I connect to server which can be accessed via another server only?
• Can I connect to an FTP server?
• How do I connect to my iPhone or iPod Touch?
• How do I know if the connection is secure?
• I get the message “Received too large (??? B) SFTP packet” when I login. What is the problem?
• Where should I type the IP address of my remote host?
• How can I use WinSCP with OpenSSH for Windows?
• How can I connect without entering key passphrase each time?
• Why does WinSCP keep on asking me for a session password?
• Why WinSCP cannot accept special characters (@ or %) in password from command-line?

• Can I transfer files between two remote servers with WinSCP (FXP)?
• When I drop files outside of WinSCP, they are moved to the drop target. I want to copy them. How do I do that?
• File transfer speed is very low. WinSCP does not utilize all available bandwidth. How do I improve the transfer speed?
• Downloaded files are stored first to a temporary directory and only after that, they are moved to the destination directory. How do I prevent storing files to a temporary directory?
• I need to overwrite a remote file that isn’t owned by me, but I’m member of its group. The file has write permission for group. After transfer I get a message like “Upload of file <filename> was successful, but error occurred while setting the permissions and/or timestamp”
• Where can I change the file transfer mode (binary, ascii) or enable the auto-select transfer mode option?
• Why is the timestamp of uploaded/downloaded file different from the timestamp of the source file?
• Can I transfer file larger than 4 GB (or 2 GB)?
• When I attempt to copy files, I get an Error 127. What does this mean?
• Why does file size and/or content change during transfer?

• How can I configure the default local or remote directory for the session?
• How do I save a session, so that I don’t need to fill in all the login information every time I start WinSCP?

I want to use the script file to connect server in the first time. The paper tell me it dose not work because it need to answer “yes” when get the ssh-rsa key but automatic “cancel”. So, can I change it in the script file? Thanks.

• How do I change user after login (e.g. su root)?
• Can I change my account password with WinSCP?
• Can I have a local directory in both panels (turn WinSCP into file manager)?
• Why is remote file timestamp shown in WinSCP panel shifted by one hour from actual timestamp of the file?
• How do I make WinSCP show localized and/or UTF-8 encoded (Unicode) filenames correctly?
• Can WinSCP show me HTTP URL address for the selected file?
• What do direction options (local, remote, both) for Synchronization mean?
• During synchronization all files are transferred. How do I make WinSCP transfer only changed files?
• Can I map a remote directory as a network drive in Windows?
• What is error code 4?
• How do I transfer my settings to another computer? How do I import/export my settings?
• I cannot read the file panel font. How can I make the panel font bigger?
• What command-line parameters can be used with WinSCP?
• How to keep the user in a specified directory on the server? (chrooted session)
• Can the internal editor be better (e.g. syntax highlighting)?
• Is there some API that I can use to add file transfer functionality to my application?