Using the transfer queue in FTP by Zaweba

Every upload and download you start ends up in one place: the transfer queue in the bottom panel. Bring it into view with View, Bottom Panel, and it shows what is waiting, what is moving and what has finished. It also holds the results of Find in Files, so the same strip of screen does two jobs.

For a quick single-file Put it may come and go before you notice. For a big batch, it is where you check that everything arrived.

What you can do there

Queued and running transfers can be cancelled. That is useful when you realise you selected the wrong folder, or when a large download is tying up the connection and you would rather it waited. Failed and cancelled transfers can be retried, so a file that dropped because the connection blinked does not mean starting the whole batch again. Finished rows can be removed, which keeps the list short enough to read when you are running several jobs in an afternoon.

The log can be copied to the clipboard. That is the thing to do when something goes wrong in a way you do not understand. Paste it into a note to yourself, or into a message to your hosting company, and they can see what happened rather than your memory of it.

Reading the queue

Because FTP by Zaweba runs several transfers side by side (3 by default, set in File, Options), you will usually see more than one row moving at once. That is normal. Deletes and renames wait for transfers queued before them, so if you see a delete sitting still while uploads finish, it is waiting its turn on purpose.

If a host refuses an extra connection, the app carries on with the connections it has and notes it in the log. A line about that is information, not an error you need to act on.

Using it with the bigger jobs

Get Newer, Put Newer, Put Recent, Get Recent, Get Entire Site and Sync all show you a list first and only start moving files once you agree. The queue is where you watch that agreed list being carried out. If a row fails, retry it from the panel; there is no need to run the whole comparison again.

Find in Files uses the panel in its own way. A search across the site lists its results there, and Stop cancels a search that is taking too long or has already found what you need.

A short routine

When you start a big upload, glance at the panel once it begins, then get on with something else. When it finishes, look for any failed rows and retry them. Then clear the finished rows so the next job starts on a clean list. If the same file fails twice, copy the log and read what the server said; often the cause is something on the server side, such as permissions, which no amount of retrying will fix.

Mistakes to avoid

Do not take a quiet screen to mean the work is done. Open the panel and check that the list is empty of queued rows and free of failures. Do not forget about cancelled rows either: a transfer you cancelled has not happened, so retry it or deal with it some other way rather than assuming the file is in place. And if you rely on Upload on Save, keep the panel visible while you work, so you can see each save actually reach the server.

Small as it is, the bottom panel is where you find out whether your work really went where you meant it to, and it makes FTP by Zaweba much easier to trust on a busy day.