Support Start > Managing Your Web Site > FTP Publishing > Settings for Common FTP Programs > FileZilla > Enabling Passive FTP in FileZilla

If you encounter problems using FileZilla, it is possible that a firewall on your computer or network is interfering with the connection. Changing the "transfer mode" in the FileZilla settings will usually solve this.

On this page:

• Enabling passive mode
• Choosing active mode instead
• What if it still doesn’t work?

Enabling passive mode

In most cases, you should be using "passive mode" to avoid network problems.

These instructions explain how to turn on passive mode for FileZilla (version 3.1.6) for Windows, although other versions are similar:

1. Start the FileZilla program if it isn't already running.
2. Click Edit, Settings in the menu bar. The "FileZilla Options" window will appear.
3. Select Connections, then FTP on the left hand side.
4. Choose the Passive (recommended) option.

It should look like this:

After you've made the changes, click OK to close the window, then try to connect and see if it has solved the problem.

Choosing active mode instead

Although it's very rare, we've also heard of a situation where you need to use "active mode" instead of passive mode. In particular, you may need to do this if you see a "Software caused connection abort" error message.

Just follow the steps above, but choose "Active" instead.

What if it still doesn’t work?

We occasionally hear from customers who are using firewalls that prevent FTP in either mode.

In most cases, using the slightly more complicated SFTP instead will work, because it avoids all firewall problems.