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Author: Kristenson, Joel
Last Updated: 2016-09-15
Overview
This article walks through the steps to configure the remote desktop app on your Mac for exporting. It assumes you’ve already downloaded and setup your remote desktop application. If you need your credentials for this you’ll need to contact our live support, they also should have been provided in our welcomes emails that we sent to the DB admins when your database was first created.
Tip: If you want to setup a remote connection to Trail Blazer on your PC (or MS Surface device), click here. If you want to setup access to Trail Blazer on your iDevices (iPhone/iPod touch/iPad), click here. If you want to use our web apps to access your contacts without downloading anything, click here.
Steps
1) Launch the MS Remote Desktop app. Assumes you’ve already downloaded and installed the remote desktop app.
2) Right-click on the connection you’ve created to Trail Blazer’s remote app server and select Edit from the context menu. If you don’t have a mouse connected to your Mac with a right-click button, you should definitely get one, otherwise use two fingers to click on the D-pad.
3) Navigate to the Redirection tab, and click the [+] button in the lower-left. Make sure the box is checked for ‘Enable folder redirection’ (which should be by default).
4) From the Add Local Folder screen select the Path drop-down, and click Browse.
5) Navigate to the directory where you want to be able to export/import data from on your Mac, and then click [Choose]. In my example I left the default as is for ‘all’ directories.
6) Click [OK] once you’re back on the Add Local Folder screen to complete the redirect configuration.
7) Click the red (x) in the upper-left of the remote desktop configuration screen to close it and return back to the main login screen.
8) Double-click on your Trail Blazer connection to log into the remote app server. In this example I used my Customer Playground NP connection.
9) Launch the Trail Blazer application and login. I prefer to pin it to the Task Bar for efficiency.
10) Build and run your search query for the list of data you’re going after (voters/donors/contributions/pledges/households/etc.). In my example I pulled up all donations for 2015 from the Contributions list.
Note: You will likely get 1 or 2 restriction messages like the one below telling you that you don’t have permission to perform this operation. Click [OK] (sometimes twice) to bypass this message to get to the next step. The reason this occurs is that the remote app server has very restricted security and in this case it’s a false-positive warning.
11) In the lower-left under the Computer drop-down you’ll now see your Mac computer as an option to export to, click on it. In this example it was called jgibson on Jamess-MacBook-.
12) Navigate to the directory where you want to save your exported spreadsheet. Once you’re there, give the file a name (don’t use any special characters, and leave it as a .CSV file type), and then click [Save]. Since I mapped all directories I had free rain of saving the file anywhere on the Mac, I selected the ‘Desktop’.
13) The process will run, and you’ll get a popup message with the results once it’s complete, click [OK] to finish. In my example it exported 890 rows.
14) Minimize the remote desktop application, navigate to the location on your Mac where you saved the file, and double-click on it to open it. In my example I saved it to the desktop of my mac. Tip: you can also right-click the file if you want to choose which program to open it in.
15) Here’s what my example looked like in the Numbers program:
16) That concludes the steps. Typically I will resave an exported .csv as an Excel spreadsheet (.xlsx) so that it retains it’s formatting. If you want to do this, either do a save-as (if your Mac supports that option), or in most cases select File > Export.
The related resources below link to a plethora of similar articles and videos. Give us a call if you have any trouble going through these steps on your Mac.
Related Resources
Article: Configure Microsoft Remote Desktop – For Mac Users (Logging into Trail Blazer on your Mac)
Article: Copying Files From Macintosh to Remote Desktop
Article: Multiple Remote Desktop Connections on a Macintosh
Article: Walk List – Selectable Format
Article: How to Create a Year-by-Year Giving History Reporting using Filtered Contribution Columns in the Grid – Primarily for Nonprofits
Video: Reporting 103 – Format with various contribution columns
Video: Filtered Contribution Columns in Format
Video: Attributes – Add attribute dates and notes to your lists
Video: Getting Started 102 – Beginning Queries
Video: Getting Started 104 – Queries with Wildcards
Video: Reporting 105 – Pivots – summary reporting
Video: Reporting 102 – Quick Reports and Export
Video: Reporting 106 – Phone Bank List
Video: Reporting 104 – Joined Tables
Video: 2X iPad Install and Configure
3rd Party Application: Microsoft Excel for Mac
3rd Party Application: Numbers App for Mac
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