Hi Jon,
Thanks for your quick reply. I put it on my home directory.

/Users/laurapas
laurapas-JBG3QJ:~ laurapas$ ls -al .netrc
-r--------@ 1 laurapas staff 84 Jan 14 16:42 .netrc

Now, I get a new message. Perhaps I did something wrong in the .netrc file?

Error in function (type, msg, asError = TRUE) :
  Failed connect to labkey-test.roche.com:443; Connection refused

Here's what I have in my file, as per the instructions. The Xs aren't my actual password....just an example.

machine https://labkey-test.roche.com:8443 login laurapas@gene.com password XXXXXXX