Maximize Remote desktop but not to full screen
- Launch Remote Desktop Connection.
- Click Options and switch to Display tab.
- Drag the slider under Display configuration from Large (Full Screen) to one tick down.
- Click Connect to check the issue.
You can launch Remote Desktop with height and width parameters. If you set these to be slightly smaller than your display size, it will take up almost all the screen, will still show your task bar and will not display scroll bars:
As detailed in this answer, launch Remote Desktop with the following parameters:
/w:[width] and /h:[height]
I have a 1280 x 1024 screen size, so it works if I run the following:
mstsc.exe /w:1270 /h:960
Modify the parameters to suit your size screen, then go to Start > Run, and paste it there. Hit OK to run it. You may have to maximise the window to take up the full dimensions you have set.
Incidentally, every time you run Remote Desktop afterwards it should remember these settings without you telling it to. If it does 'forget', just save it as a shortcut and run that every time.
None of the other answers worked for me, I always got a vertical and horizontal scroll bar. But I also noticed that on the drop down from the RD menu "Smart Sizing" was greyed out and could not change. Some more searching and I found that I could edit the Default.rdp file with a text editor, and added the following line:
smart sizing:i:1
Now everything works as expected.