Azure FTP 550 - Access is Denied

2017-08-05 · 1 min

I hit this for the first time today. A colleague wanted to quickly FTP some files to an Azure web app, but whichever directory they tried, they got the same error:

My first thought was a missing permission on the user account. But they'd taken the credentials from the web app's .PublishSettings file.

Solution

The publish settings XML has a profile called [app name] - ReadOnly - FTP. Its credentials are read-only. It's an easy mistake, because depending on your editor, the XML may be one long line. The profile you want is the one named just FTP.

Hope that saves someone some time!