[vbplusme]

That's because on unix its SUPPOSE to be an invisible file. Your server must be configure to enforce that but usually you can see them in ftp, you should check your client to see if it has a "display invisible files" parameter and enable it.

Often people work on .htaccess file locally and call them htaccess.txt to avoid complication with operating systems like windows when it doesn't like a file with no name and only an extension.

Actually, you have it backwards, you should make the error pages first so you know for sure what to put in the .htaccess file.

Forgot to ask, do you have access to cPanel?