Time Machine restore

Select Mac Help from the Finder's Help menu and search for "time machine." There will be several articles listed including how to restore from a TM backup.

If you move to the topics list for this forum you will find three User Tips at the top in which you will also find considerable assistance on the topic.

Also see Mac 101- Time Machine.

Swamp_Fox wrote:
To cure a recurring problem with Photoshop (which couldn't be resolved by and uninstall/reinstall of that app) and to clear accumulated clutter, I assisted a friend in doing a clean install of Snow Leopard. I suppose that I should have anticipated this and not proceeded from the start but our mistaken assumption was that it would be possible to restore his Mail, Contacts and data files from a Time Machine backup. This was either an incorrect assumption on our part or we bungled the restore process.

What did you do?

Can anyone tell me whether it is somehow possible to restore his data from one of these old Time Machine backups?

Yes.

If it is possible, could the precise steps be outlined for us?

There are a number of ways to restore from Time Machine; without knowing just what you want to restore versus what you want to leave behind, it's rather difficult to give you precise steps.

• To restore your entire system, see #14 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.
  
• To restore everything but OSX, erase your internal HD, install OSX, then use +Setup Assistant+ per #19 in the FAQ Tip.
  
• To restore selected items, see #15 in, you guessed it, the FAQ Tip.

Swamp_Fox wrote:
This is what we tried:

That will restore a user account from one Mac's backups to a new user account on the same or a different Mac. Done properly, that should have transferred everything in the user's home folder. Apparently it didn't, or you wouldn't be posting here.

So what went wrong with that procedure, or what wasn't restored?

As mentioned in my previous post, there are ways to restore your entire system; get a new copy of OSX and transfer everything else; or restore individual items; but we don't know how to advise you until you clarify what you're trying to do.

Swamp_Fox wrote:
My friend needs to: A. restore his emails, B. his Address Book contacts and C. his photos and document files. We attempted to follow the instructions from this topic:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2346331&tstart=15

I don't know what we did incorrectly.

That was to restore partial backups to a different Mac, where the entire system hadn't been saved and a full system restore could not be done -- a very different situation.

You can restore individual items, such as those you listed, from the "Star Wars" display. See #15 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip,* also at the top of this forum.

But if, when you say "emails," you mean everything in Apple Mail, including all the account data (server names, passwords, etc.) and preference information, plus all the mailboxes and contents; don't use the special handling shown in #15 for Mail. Instead, start with the Finder, then go into the "Star Wars" display, and restore the entire +*<home folder>/Library/Mail+* folder.

Or, if what you actually want to do is restore the entire home folder, you should start over. Erase the internal HD and install OSX from the OSX install disc, then use +Setup Assistant+ per #19 in the FAQ Tip. Then download and install the "combo" update to get back to the correct version of OSX, and run +Repair Permissions.+