SLF Feb 2012
Installing and Configuring Remote Desktop
Connection Client for Mac
Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection Client for Mac comes bundled with Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac, but you can also get it for free at the Microsoft Download Center.
SLF Feb 2012
Follow the on-screen instructions and click Continue when prompted.
SLF Feb 2012
By default, the Remote Desktop Connection Client for Mac installer will choose the hard drive where OS X is installed as the install location. Click Install.
SLF Feb 2012
After the installation finishes, click Close.
SLF Feb 2012
Remote Desktop Connection Client for Mac
Preferences
When you first launch Remote Desktop Connection Client for Mac, you can go ahead and launch a connection using the default settings. But for the best performance and security, you may want to set up some preferences first. Begin by typing the name of a computer into the Computer field. If you’re not sure what the name of your computer is, you can find it in the System Properties pane on your Windows-based machine.
SLF Feb 2012
Access the Preferences for the connection you have open by clicking the Remote Desktop Connection menu and clicking Preferences.
The Login tab lets you choose your user name, password and domain. The user name and password correspond to an administrator level user account on the host machine, or a standard level user account which has been enabled for Remote Desktop Connection connections. In other words, type in the same user name and password that you would use if you were sitting right in front of the computer and logging in locally.
The domain should already be filled in with the computer name.
Lastly, you can select ’Add user information to your keychain’, which saves you from entering these credentials next time. OS X users will recognize the keychain as Mac OS’s system-wide password manager.
SLF Feb 2012
The Display tab lets you tweak settings such as the color depth, display size and some other visualization features. These options can help with performance when remotely connected. For example, you can disable the background, themes and menu and window animations and decrease the color depth in order to speed things up on the Remote Desktop Connection Client, especially since these extra flourishes aren’t particularly essential for the types of tasks you’ll likely be doing via Remote Desktop Connection. Disabling font smoothing may also make the text more readable, especially when the window is resized.
SLF Feb 2012
You can also change how Sound plays. You can choose to play the sound only on the Macintosh (client), only on the Windows-based computer (server) or on neither.
SLF Feb 2012
The drives you choose here will show up under tsclient in Windows Explorer. Here, you can read and write to and from your Macintosh’s hard drive.
SLF Feb 2012
In the Security tab, you can change the authentication settings. Remote Desktop Connection tries to prevent you from connecting to a computer other than the one you intended by double-checking that the server name on the certificate matches the address or computer name that you entered. If it does not, authentication will fail. In this case, you can tell Remote Desktop Connection to connect anyway, to warn you before connecting or to cancel the connection.
In most cases, the third option, ’Do not connect if authentication fails’, is the most secure. But if you are entering your IP address rather than the computer name to connect, the server’s name won’t match what you entered to connect, thus causing authentication to fail, even though you are connecting to the machine you intended to. If you’ll be using an IP address to connect, choose the second option ’Warn me if authentication fails’ or the first option ’Always connect, even if
authentication fails’.
To save the settings you’ve just made, click File, choose Save as and enter a filename for your
