Thanks - when I looked at this earlier today I didn't realise you could specify direction - it looked as though it always treated the local folder as the 'master'.

bluemuppet wrote:

I'm looking for a way to only download remote files that do not exist locally, or are newer than the local file.

That's just plain synchronization. It not the same complicated problem as this thread is about.
See https://winscp.net/eng/docs/task_synchronize_full

Is the answer to this any different with the latest version of WinSCP? (4.36)

I'm looking for a way to only download remote files that do not exist locally, or are newer than the local file.

Thanks.

There's no really easy way to do that. But this example script may help you.

First off, I am pretty sure I cannot use the Synch command.
Remote Folder contains thousands of files.
Local Folder contains only a handful of files until they are processed, then they are moved to an archive folder.

I need to be able to transfer just today's files from remote to local, but I do NOT want to overwrite.

All the script examples I see have the following 2 lines:
option batch on
option confirm off

This will overwrite the files which I do not want.

I tried writing a script that said:
get 20091101*
w

In the hopes that the ne(w)ew option would be send to the prompt that appears when a file already exists, but no joy

So is there a way to only transfer newer files based on a wildcard as opposed to Synch mode?

I would love to see something simple like: option confirm newer
That would answer w for me for all file copy collisions.

Thanks