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Migration lost my text substitutions

I migrated from an old Mac Mini to an M1 Mac Mini. All things considered, the transition went amazingly well, but it appears that my extensive list of text substitutions did not make it. Are my text substitutions hiding somewhere on the new machine, or must I recover them from the old machine (running High Sierra)? If the latter, where do I find them, and how do I install them on the M1?

Mac mini 2018 or later

Posted on Dec 2, 2020 5:22 PM

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Question marked as Apple recommended

I'm happy to report that through diligent investigation I discovered how to do this. I'll explain it here in the hope that it'll help others with the same problem. On your old computer, open the text substitutions, which are in the "Keyboard" category in System Preferences. Activate the window with your list of substitutions and Select All. Dragging this to the Desktop yields a file called "text substitutions.plist". Copy that to a thumb drive or some other external medium and transfer it to your new computer. Open System Preferences to the same location and drag the file into the window for text substitutions. That's it.

Posted on Dec 4, 2020 4:49 PM

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Question marked as Apple recommended

Dec 4, 2020 4:49 PM in response to mountainshack

I'm happy to report that through diligent investigation I discovered how to do this. I'll explain it here in the hope that it'll help others with the same problem. On your old computer, open the text substitutions, which are in the "Keyboard" category in System Preferences. Activate the window with your list of substitutions and Select All. Dragging this to the Desktop yields a file called "text substitutions.plist". Copy that to a thumb drive or some other external medium and transfer it to your new computer. Open System Preferences to the same location and drag the file into the window for text substitutions. That's it.

Migration lost my text substitutions

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