Downloading and Saving Files Using FTP

If you've read and understood the A Place to Start section on File Transfer Protocol (FTP), you're probably ready to get into FTP a little more.

How to Download and Save Files

Let's assume you've found a file or program you want. How do you download it to a location of your choosing? To download a file, follow these steps:

  1. Hold the Shift key down while clicking on the filename of the file you want to download.
  2. When the Save As (Save In) dialog box displays, enter the location (folder) in which you want to save the file.
  3. Press Enter to download the file to the location specified.

Downloading and saving files is only part of the process. You need to know a little about file types before you do much downloading. Click here for a description of file types. Many application programs are archived with some sort of compression scheme. The most common archival compression scheme is Zip. Files that end with the .zip extension are compressed in this way. You must uncompress them to use them. Most archives are not self-uncompressing. You need to use another software program to access the files. You may need to configure a helper application.

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