Public Keys - How are they assigned to connections

I have used WinSCP SFTP with user names / password previously successfully.

I now have a requirement to connect to another SFTP site which uses public keys. I generated such a key on my client using PuTTYgen (RSA/2048) with no passphrase and sent this to the SFTP Server team who loaded it in and gave me back a username/password. The public key file is stored on my desktop.

I put in the IP address of the SFTP Server and the provided username/password but the connection fails (times out). I have instructions from the SFTP Server team but they are based on IPSwitch SFTP client software. In that product you can reference the public key file to use in the connection. I cannot see the ability to do this with WinSCP.

So can you please advise how this is done with WinSCP? Do I explicitly attach the public key file or does it have be stored in a certain place or loaded into the system as you do with certificates?

I am using WinSCP version 5.9.4.

Thanks

First, you do not authenticate with public key, but with private key.

You specify the private key on Authentication page of Advanced site settings dialog:
https://winscp.net/eng/docs/ui_login_authentication

Though the "timeout" error can actually indicate a completely different problem. If the above does not help, please attach a full session log file showing the problem (using the latest version of WinSCP).

Martin, I regenerated the key pair properly this time - public and private.
The connection now works fine.

Thank you :D