My Imac bit the dust after a month and I'm left with a couple of files I'd like to keep working on using an older computer running Leopard. But when I start Time Machine from the Leopard computer, it can't see my files. My user name is different, but that's not supposed to matter. Shouldn't I be able to find the file somehow? It's not happening.
The program is about as confusing as this website.
Help appreciated
Mac OS X (10.5.8)
Time Machine normally only shows the backups for the Mac it's running on.
To see the backups for a different Mac, you'll need the Browse... option, per Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #17.
Super, thanks for the advice.
Thank you for the quick and direct link to an impressively complete and helpful guide on this, Pondini!
How was that an admission that it is useless? You sound like a very angry person who wants to hate Mac. As for not being able to find answers easily, my very reliable iMac just died (after I left the window open and rain came in), and it took me less than one minute on Google, then following the steps as outlined in the very first reply, only 1 hour & 33 minutes after your post, For Free !!!!
Gratitude, patience, manners, respect. Shoot me down, I don't care. Someone has to stand up for what's right!
From this little black duck, thankyou to Pondini. Your free assistance and guidance is certainly appreciated, I'm guessing by far more than you realize.
Luvmadaysoff
As a matter of fact you're right. I'm a cranky old man. I complain a lot and Pondini has done a great job over the years explaining how Time Machine works. I was wrong in my impulsive assessment and admitted it in subsequent posts.
And now that we're all thru that lovey-dovey stuff you can thank people like me for consumer goods that work and for corporations that try to support their customers. All kinds of consumer standards were put in place due to hard-to-please customers like me. If the world was full of happy, forgivingpeople we'd still be using Windows 95, eating tainted meat and driving dangerous cars.
So here's my current problem. I backed up a macbook on time machine and had dropbox files on it. I cleaned the machine and gave it to my granddaughter, inadvertently deleting the dropbox files. The next day I "recovered" most of the files on dropbox.com, but now it's 3 months later and some folders are there but are empty of files. Dropbox doesn't recover after 30 days.
I used your instructions for retrieving files on the previous mac from my new macbook pro using time machine. I see the hard drive back ups, and I see dropbox but I can't figure out how to get those files! Any ideas? Here's what I see. Thanks!
Sadly Pondini has passed away. 😟
What happens choice wise if you right click on Dropbox there, or double click?
Retrieve time machine file on another computer
