This page provides examples for retrieving SFTP report files using WinSCP and a Linux command line.

WinSCP is a free SFTP client for Windows. PayPal doesn't endorse or recommend WinSCP; it's just one of the more popular SFTP clients for Windows and is used for this example. SFTP support is generally built into Linux/UNIX.
 

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Using WinSCP These instructions assume you've already downloaded and installed WinSCP on your computer and you've created an SFTP user and password.

1. Launch WinSCP.
2. Click the New button.
3. Specify Host name (server URL), your SFTP user name and password, also the port and protocol:

• Host name - Enter reports.paypal.com for live, reports.sandbox.paypal.com for sandbox
• User name - Enter the SFTP username you were assigned when you created the SFTP account.
• Password - Enter the password for the SFTP user. This would have been a password you set yourself. It isn't auto-generated and may differ from your PayPal account password.
• Check that the port is set to 22 and the protocol is SFTP.

4. Click Login. WinSCP notifies you that it's trying to log in to the server, using the username and password you specified. The left pane shows files on your local machine. The right pane shows files on the SFTP server.
5. To get to your reports, double-click ppreports in the right pane. Then double-click the outgoing folder. (This is the equivalent to selecting ppreports  > outgoing.) In this directory, you can file your available report files, and you can drag them over to your local computer (left pane) for further manipulation.
6. When finished, close the WinSCP window or select Session > Disconnect to log off.

Note: You can save the login information within WinSCP, so that you don't have to enter the above data each time you log in to the reporting server. See the WinSCP documentation for more details on how to do this.
 

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Using command line SFTP
The following instructions were performed on a Linux machine running Red Hat version 9. Check the man or help pages for the sftp command on your installation if the following commands don't yield the same results.

The actual commands you type are shown in bold text:

1. From the command prompt, type sftp username@reports.paypal.com.
2. When prompted, enter the password you set up for the SFTP user.
3. When you see a prompt indicating that you're logged in to the server, type cd ppreports/outgoing and press Enter.
4. You should now be in the ppreports/outgoing directory. You can list the files in this directory by typing ls and pressing Enter.

• You can download report files from here by entering get <filename>, as in: get STL-20081020.01.002.CSV
• The file should be downloaded to the directory you were in before invoking the SFTP command on your local machine. 

5. When you've finished downloading report files, log off from the reporting server by typing exit and pressing Enter.

Note: Command line SFTP should support wild cards. So, for example, if you wanted to download all the settlement reports available on the server for your account, you could type get STL-*. Along the same lines, you could opt to download reports for a certain month, as in: get STL-200809*  (download any file with a file name corresponding to September 2008).