Editing/Opening Files

For basic editing WinSCP offers a simple integrated text editor. For advanced editing you will probably want to configure your favourite editor.

Some external editors can open multiple files in one process. Usually such editors have some kind of tabbed interface, but it is also the case of new versions of Microsoft Word (2000 and later).

If such an editor is already running and WinSCP runs a second instance to open a new file, then the second instance just notifies the first to open the new file and exits immediately.

To allow using this kind of editor, WinSCP does not treat the file as closed when the editor launched to open it is closed.

If you choose to edit the same file again during the same session, WinSCP will download it to the same temporary directory as before, allowing the external editor to reload the file content in case it still has it opened (assuming the editor can detect the change).

One drawback of this approach is that all of the files ever edited by the current instance of WinSCP are kept in a temporary directory (until WinSCP is closed). WinSCP watches for changes to them all.

If you want to avoid that, you need to make sure that your editor opens each file in a separate window (process). Some editors do that by default while some offer a configuration option for that. If either is the case, then configure your editor as an external editor for WinSCP and enable preference option External editor opens each file in separate window (process). WinSCP will then treat the file as closed when the editor launched to open it is closed.

• Note that this setting only affects the “edit” operation. So you may want to make sure that editing is the default operation for double-click.
• For configuring Vim, you would not choose to option preference above for opening each file in a separate process. See Configuring Vim as an External Editor for more information.

Vim can be easily configured for use with WinSCP. To configure Vim as an external editor in WinSCP, do the following:

1. From the menu of WinSCP, select Options > Preferences
2. Select Editors from the left pane of the Preferences window.
3. From Editor Preference, select Add …
4. From the Add Editor window, click on the External editor radio button.
5. Click the Browse button and navigate to the path where Vim is installed. For example, the default installation for a Windows installation of Vim is “C:\Program Files\Vim\vim72\ (Assuming Vim 7.2 is your version). You could also apply these steps to the portable version of Vim as well.
6. Select gvim.exe as the editor. (Note: This selects the GUI version of Vim.)

You will notice the the box will return something that looks similar to the following:
”C:\Program Files\Vim\vim72\gvim.exe“ !.!
Make sure to leave the !.! as it is at the end of the string.
For simple use of Vim, choosing any of the External editor options below the Editor selection are optional depending on your needs. However, as you will see in the next section, this is not the case for using Vim with multiple tabs. To complete the external editor selection, click the OK button at each dialog to finish the setup. Whenever you right-click on a file and select Edit, the file will be loaded into Vim for editing.

Vim supports multiple tabs as of version 7. Invoking a multiple tab session requires an additional command line argument to be passed to Vim. Step 6 above documents what is returned when the Vim editor executable (gvim.exe) is selected. The string ”C:\Program Files\Vim\vim72\gvim.exe“ !.! is indicated in the box for External editor. In order to enable multiple tab support, you must pass the –remote-tab-silent argument to the command line just before !.!. To make this change, place your cursor in the drop-down box after the ” and before the !.!.
Just type in –remote-tab-silent. Make sure there is a space between that and !.!.

The full command line string should look accordingly:
“C:\Program Files\Vim\vim72\gvim.exe” –remote-tab-silent !.!
In the section below titled External editor options (affects editing remote files only), make sure the box titled External Editor opens each file in separate window (process) is Un-Checked. You want each file to open in Vim in the same process since the tabs are derived in the same Vim session.

To edit files in Vim using multiple tabs, select either one or multiple files in the WinSCP file Explorer using your mouse and keyboard. Right click on one of the highlighted files and select Edit. Vim will load the selected files in separate tabs in one Vim edit session. Any time you want to edit an additional file in the same session, just right-click on it and select Edit. The file will be loaded into a new tab in the original Vim session.

The internal editor supports only Windows-format text files. Thus the text transfer mode is forced when transferring remote file to/from the internal editor.

If you want to edit binary files you need to use external editor that supports binary files and uncheck preference option Force text transfer mode for files edited in external editor. The configured transfer mode will then be used even for transfers to/from external editor. Note that if you have configured binary transfer mode, your external editor must support server-side format of text files (Unix format usually), if you still want to edit them.

When remote file is downloaded to editor or uploaded from editor, default transfer settings or settings of active preset are used, with some exceptions:

• Filename modification option is forced to “No change”.
• Replacement of characters not valid on Windows is enabled (original filename is restored on upload).
• Exclude and include masks are ignored.
• Text transfer mode may be forced (see Editing Binary Files).
• Transfer resume support is disabled.