This article contains information on creating remote files using plink (Putty, SSH) called from the emacs tramp package, on Windows 7 or Windows XP, emacs version 23.1.1

Emacs can be used to remotely edit files over SSH, for instance on unix servers. Many pages on the web explain how to get this working using the emacs tramp package so I will only briefly describe it here. I did run into problems to get it working. I only got it working with plink (putty), but got stuck with terminal issues when trying ssh. It took me a while before I understood that the directory of the plink executable must be in the Windows Path environment variable. It was also necessary to get the latest version of the tramp package (2.1.17).

Be careful when remotely editing files from another user, emacs seems to change the ownership when saving the file. In particular this can be a problem when you are used to edit files as user root.

Though I like editing remote files with tramp, emacs, and plink sometimes I want to see a proper graphical remote directory view. In that case I use winscp. This is a beautiful explorer like program which integrates nicely with pageant as well. So it allows logins without specifying username/password in combination with keys loaded in pageant just as putty and plink do.

Loading a file from winscp into emacs is easy. First specify the emacs client as editor in winscp (Options, Preferences, Editor). Then select the file, click the right mouse button and choose edit. If you save the file within emacs it is automatically uploaded to the remote server.