Ftp host: ftp.example.com
User name: user1
Password: pass1

This information is a minimum that one must have to successfully connect and authenticate in some FTP site provided that on an FTP server no anonymous access is granted, or the data was made available to a specific user, user1 in our case.

So, what we need is to have an FTP client to access FTP server. Here’re the steps you need to follow to access the site using Internet Explorer 7:

1 ) Open Internet Explorer and enter the ftp host address in the address bar

2 ) You’ll be prompted for a user name and password

3 ) Enter user1 in the User name field and pass1 in the Password field and click Log On. Make sure that the “Log on anonymously“checkbox is not ticked.

4 ) If the user name and the password are entered correctly Internet Explorer will show the contents of the ftp server pertinent to your log on credentials:

5 ) Now you can click to open a file or right-click and select “Save Target As…” from the drop down menu:

6 ) Select the location where you want to save the file and click “Save”:

7 ) * It worth to mention here that if you get an error like in the bellow image (The login request was denied) when you right-click the file and select “Save target as…” then you may try to pass the user name and password directly into the address bar, in the following format: ftp://user:password@ftpserver/url-path. In our example the correct way to pass user name and password in the address bar would be: ftp://user1:pass1@example.com

8 ) * Another issue you may encounter here is that the Log On window will not appear at all. In this case make sure that “Enable FTP Folder view” in the advanced tab of Internet Explorer properties is checked.

More on Internet Explorer FTP login/authorization options can be found in this KB: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/135975

Using an FTP Client with GUI (Graphical User Interface)

One may also consider using a specialized program for accessing FTP to download / upload files to an FTP server. There’s various FTP client software available on the market which is both free and non-free. A review of those clients with links to download can be found here: http://download.cnet.com/windows/ftp-software/ and here: http://rbytes.net/software/network-and-internet_c/ftp-clients_s/

In this example I will show how to use FileZilla which can be downloaded from here: http://filezilla-project.org/ FileZilla is free software which comes in both as an FTP Server and FTP Client. You will need a Client for this example, since we are not going to set-up a new FTP Server but just to connect and download files from an existing FTP server – ftp.example.com in our case.

So, let’s start by going to FileZilla homepage and download a FileZilla client. Select the file which is appropriate to your operating system. FileZilla client can be installed on Windows, Linux and Macintosh.

Once download the installation procedure is quite straightforward.

After installing FileZilla client launch it and enter a host name, user name and password that were supplied to you and then click Quickconnect.

You will see ftp commands in the top pane of the FileZilla client, local folders (2) and files (3) and the remote servers folders (4) and files (5). The lower pane (6) will show the download/transfer queue / progress.

To download a file a file from the remote ftp server first, select the local destination on the left side. Once selected select a file or files on a remote server right-click with your mouse on a selected file and select Download:

Now, selected files will be added to a download queue in the bottom pane of the FileZilla client application.

Once the download is completed you will see your downloaded files in the left side under the folder which you have selected before starting the download:

That ends the mini how-to on downloading files from an FTP server.