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Patti-Eileen Author

Level 1

9 points

Transferring files and apps from an old MacBook Pro to a new one

My 2013 MacBook finally bit the dust. Screen is black and it won't take a charge. It may or may not have come into contact with a spilled glass of Sangria recently (when it was closed). So, I bought a new MacBook Pro a couple days ago. When I turned it on, there were all my old files that had been sitting on the old MacBook desktop! To my limited knowledge, I wasn't running Migration Asst. or any other transfer program, they all just magically appeared. However, my MS Word, Excel and Powerpoint programs did not show up. Is any of this normal? Do I need to repurchase or resubscribe to Office 365 to get Word, etc. again? I tried opening up one of my word docs sitting on the new desktop and it opened in Pages instead, which is OK, but I also want to have a working Word program. Thanks so much for any help.

MacBook Pro 13", macOS 10.13

Posted on Oct 31, 2019 5:31 PM

Top-ranking reply

Crynay

Level 3

649 points

Posted on Nov 1, 2019 3:18 AM

You were logged into iCloud on your old MacBook, so your documents were automatically saved in the cloud.

When you set up your new MacBook, it asked you to sign into your iCloud account and then it copied everything from the cloud to your new MacBook.

Only data is saved in the cloud, not programs. If you had Office 365, you do not need to buy it again but you do need to reinstall it. Just open Safari and go to: office.com/setup, then click "Install from your Microsoft account" and follow the instructions to download and install.

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Transferring files and apps from an old MacBook Pro to a new one

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