I would love to know how you did that as I have the same issue! Thank you in advance.
As per this post:
Hi Dev. windows gui/daemon cannot sync. Even did as someone suggested by typing: edollard --add-exclusive-node 77.103.133.157:33030. They still cannot sync. What's problem? It just stalked.
Not even sure how to manage to run the daemon through the GUI app with parameters, I started the daemon manually with this switch through command line. Once it is running, the GUI wallet connects to the daemon through localhost address and reads if there are some changes regarding your wallet.
I am thinking, since so far the daemons are syncing to some remote node rather than the whole network, could the wallet also connect to remote node directly, as monero wallets do? It may not be so interesting now, but as the blockchain will rise in size, it will be pain to sync it and keep stored locally.