Users can create a shortcut on their desktop to the Remote Desktop Connection Client on their local PC to make it easier to login to their remote server. The shortcut can include customization like enabling printer redirection, enabling clipboard (to copy and paste between the server and local PC), hard drive redirection and more. You can also choose to save your username so you don’t need to enter it each time.
If you are the local IT admin and want to make it easier for your users to login to their remote desktop session on the remote server, you can create the RDP shortcut for each of them on their local PC or create it on your PC and provide it to them to save on their desktop. This assumes that the users are on the same version of Windows/RDP.
Steps to create a shortcut on your desktop to your local Remote Desktop Connection Client:
- On your Windows PC, open your local remote desktop connection client by clicking the start button and typing mstsc, or browsing to the program in start, all programs, accessories, remote desktop connection
- Click on “Show Options” to view the settings that can be modified/customized.
- On the General Tab, you can enter the computer name field as the IP address of the remote server or dns name if setup. You can also enter the username if you want it to be saved. Do not click “save as” yet as you will want to make additional selections first and then come back to the general tab to “save as” the shortcut to the desktop.
- On the Display Tab, you probably want to keep it as Full Screen.
- On the Local Resources tab, you have several important options particularly in the “local devices and resources” section. Most users will want to make sure the boxes are checked by both Printers and Clipboard which will allow you to print to you local printer and copy and paste files between your local PC and the server. Under the “More” settings, you can select whether to redirect your local c: drive which will then show up in windows explorer on the server to make it easy to move files between your PC and server. We typically don’t recommend that you redirect your hard drives by default in the shortcut because it utilizes additional resources and bandwidth (and you can easily move files using clipboard – copy/paste instead), but rather you can redirect your hard drive only when necessary by changing the setting prior to connecting. If you intend to move files between your PC and server frequently, then you make want to redirect your c: drive by default.
- After you have made your selections (usually you can leave the defaults on the remaining tabs), go back to the General Tab and click “Save As”, enter a shortcut name of your liking, and make sure to select your Desktop as the destination for the shortcut. (If you select “Save” instead of “Save As”, your choices will overwrite the default remote desktop connection profile on your local PC.) After saving it to your desktop, you should now see the shortcut on your desktop for easy access!
- We also have a video on creating RDP shortcuts that you can review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLKSMcIrfqE
