Azure Virtual Desktop (Entra only): possible to redirect opening Excel file on local machine

Question

We have a set of users that are licensed with E5 in our main tenant, but have them opening a published AVD app via the Remote Desktop client in another one of our tenants. We have the per user AVD App publishing turned on in this additional tenant. The app that this small group of users is using in this other tenant has a process to run a report which then gets exported to Excel.

So end user launches Windows Remote Desktop App, Opens published app, runs a report that has an option to export to Excel. This works now but we would like this data to instead open on the local client (have this data redirect to local client and open in Excel).

One other important bit of information is the end users' client machine is hybrid joined to our main tenant (in case this matters).

Answer 1

Hi mpls,

Welcome to the Microsoft Q&A Platform! Thank you for asking your question here.

To do redirection of exported data from the Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) app to the local Excel application try this below steps
First Enable Drive Redirection in the Remote Desktop Client and Configure AVD Session Host for File Redirection. On the AVD session host Modify the App's Export Path to Use Redirected Drives.
See that files are associated with excel on user local machine and
For detailed information, please check https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-desktop/client-device-redirection-intune
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-desktop/redirection-remote-desktop-protocol
This provides detailed instructions on redirecting various types of storage drives from a local device to a remote session over the Remote Desktop Protocol https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-desktop/redirection-configure-drives-storage?tabs=intune&pivots=azure-virtual-desktop

If you have any further queries, please do let us know.