Q: Migration Strategy
I am now running on a late 2009 27" iMac with OSX 10.10.5. My new 27" iMac with OSX 10.11 is arriving Monday.
I think I would like to do a clean install of applications and preferences. The user account I now have has been continuously migrated and upgraded since 2005, and I observe a lot of leftover preferences and other library files from applications I no longer use. Notably this user account starts much slower than other accounts on the same machine.
I am quite capable of quickly and efficiently copying the user files from one machine to the other and reinstalling applications. The big question is how do I deal with Apple Mail?. It seems to me that if I copy the entire Library/Mail folder to the new machine I have a problem because the Mail folder will be in 10.10 format, in a 10.11 OS.
I have Calendar, Contacts and Notes connected to iCloud, I can just sync the new account with iCloud.
I could of course upgrade the old machine to 10.11 before this operation, but I see from this forum that a 10.10 to 10.11 upgrade carries it's own risks.
Any helpful comments and suggestions?
iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10.5), 2.66GHz Core i5, 16GB RAM
Posted on May 6, 2016 4:32 PM
If they're IMAP mail accounts, it'll bring in all the mail associated with the account, just by adding it to the new Mac.
If you have "on my mac" folders, you can right click them > export > save to a USB stick (or whatever). Then open mail on the new mac (after adding the mail accounts) > File > Import and import those mailboxes.
Posted on May 6, 2016 4:44 PM