Connecting Dell Laptop to iMac and Dell Monitor to have three monitors

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Connecting Dell Laptop to iMac and Dell Monitor to have three monitors

I am going to be working remote, and wanted to know if there is a way to connect my Dell Latitude 7480 up to my 2011 21.5" iMac and Dell monitor at home.

Currently, I have my iMac 2011 at home connected to a Dell monitor using Thunderbolt to VGA cable. I want to to hook up my Latitude 7480 into that current setup, so that I may use the Dell laptop as the main screen, and my other two monitors at home as monitor displays. The iMac 2011 has four usb ports and one thunderbolt port. I currently have the thunderbolt-vga adapter plugged into the Dell monitor at home to use it as an extended monitor.

MacBook Air 11", macOS 10.14

Posted on May 13, 2019 2:53 PM

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Answer 1

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rkaufmann87

Level 10

143,706 points

May 13, 2019 3:06 PM in response to Rjcasey2

If I understand what you want to do it is to use your iMac as a display for your Dell Computer. This is called Target Display Mode and no it will not work on a 2011 21.5" iMac. The ONLY iMacs that supported this for PC's were late 2009 and 2010 27" iMacs, 21.5" models did not support it. The iMac and the PC both had to have mini display ports.

Apple explains Target Display Mode in https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204592

If I understand what you want to do, you need to buy an additional external display to connect to your Dell and also need to check to see if your Dell supports 2 external displays.

Good luck.

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