Log in to FTP using Windows Explorer with @ in the username

Question

I need to set up a connection to an FTP server, but there are a couple of caveats. I CANNOT use third-party software (period). It has to be done in Windows Explorer.

The other caveat is that there is an @ symbol in both the login & the password. So I'm trying to connect, using Windows FTP to an address that looks like; user@name:pass@[email protected]

Is there anything I can do as far as escape characters go maybe? This server uses UTF-8 which has @ as %40, but I haven't been able to get that to work.

Solution

I set up a TCP server using nc. By using the following URL I got the following output (I greeted and answered the client by hand). The version of Internet Explorer I used was Internet Explorer 6 from modern.ie.

ftp://user%40name:pass%[email protected]

220 hi
USER user@name
331 ok
PASS pass@word
230 ok
opts utf8 on

It looks to me like escaping with %40 works just fine. If it doesn't work in your case, I'd check if there isn't some server problem. Ideally, try to log in with another client just to check your setup. Internet Explorer has no issue supporting percent-encoding.

Comments

[Karl Is Wright]

I haven't heard of that one before. Does it matter what extension the filename has? can it just be a .txt file?

[Gautam Jose]

Name or extension of file may not matter. I have used with .bat files in past. You can give all the ftp commands in the file including the host address. Also If your host implements auto login add argument -n to the command.

[Karl Is Wright]

OK, so as a test, I was able to use the ftp -s:filename method to connect to an ftp server. Syntax used (in cmd); ftp -s:filename.txt ftp.contoso.ca I wasn't able to put the ftp server in the file. I have not yet tried with the @ symbol. When I do, I'll share the result.

[Gautam Jose]

if you need to add server address, you need to add below command in file. open ftp.contoso.ca File is just a medium to give ftp commands you usually input in ftp console. In short ftp :s command execute a batch of ftp commands.

[Karl Is Wright]

OK. I've got a new problem now. When I try to logon to the ftp server, in windows explorer it just says the connection was remotely terminated before I even get a login-prompt. When I try to connect via cmd, I get an error saying cleartext authentication isn't allowed. Can I change how Windows Explorer does authentication?

[Karl Is Wright]

OK, for some reason it's not letting me enable either FTP Server or Extensibility. Working on getting that up again. When I do get to FTP Auth, what do I do in that window? Do I just enable Basic Authentication? What difference will this make, it sounds like this is only for people running their own FTP server; I'm not running an FTP server, I'm trying to connect to some else.

[Gautam Jose]

Yeah the latter part was for the server admin. I thought you had access to the ftp server, you could make some tweaks.