Can I move only some files from my old (2010) iMac to my new MacBook Air using Migration Assistant? I'm mostly concerned about some older-format Excel, Word and Quicken/TurboTax documents that aren't stored in iCloud.
MacBook Air (2020 or later)
You can select broad categories of data to migrate, but not down to the level of individual files. This is not what is intended with this application. Migration Assistant is an undervalued tool in MacOS and one of the attractions for using a Mac - it has for many years now made it easy to migrate all your data from a retiring Mac to a new one, or to restore back onto a Mac after a disc erase. This is not the case with some other computer platforms.
See the support document called Move your content to a new Mac in which you can see a graphic of the dialogue box where you can select Applications, User Accounts, and System files, though generally you'd want to tick all the boxes to set up a new Mac as a copy of the old.
Your question is a bit unclear - did you want to preserve some files or discard them? If you are "concerned" about some files back them up and preserve them by all means, but older MS Office files usually open in updated Office software if that is intended for your new Mac.
Migration Assistant
