Migration assistant replace user account greyed out

Question

Level 1

10 points

Migration assistant replace user account greyed out

good morning

i rang apple this morning regarding my iMac suffering from the spinning rainbow wheel quite a lot recently.

we backed up data, erased the HD and installed High Sierra. I was told to not tick any buttons until I got to the desktop and then use migration assistant with my backup.

I have started the procedure and and got to a user account already exists. There are supposed to be 2 options replace xx on this Mac (which is grey scaled) and won't let me select or keep both user accounts and rename. Having read a few posts on the communities it seems 2 accounts causes confusion.

does anyone know how I can get the replace xx to work? If I have to proceed with new user account bearing in mind this "new" Mac has nothing on it what do I do as I don't want 2 user accounts.

i have tried getting back to apple but I don't know when I will hear back and I am stuck on this page.

thank you

😀

macOS High Sierra (10.13)

Posted on Oct 22, 2017 4:27 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Rory Game

Level 2

313 points

Feb 12, 2018 12:13 AM in response to womanofkent

if you can get into the existing account, just create a new admin account, sign out & sign back into the new admin account, delete the previous account that was causing the problem & then from the new account start the migration assistant & restore as you need.

Or you can change the name of the existing account maybe

Reply

Answer 2

den.thed

Level 10

91,918 points

Oct 22, 2017 8:32 AM in response to womanofkent

womanofkent wrote:

I was told to not tick any buttons until I got to the desktop and then use migration assistant with my backup.

That is wrong. To end up with just the original user account, you need to Migrate it during the initial macOS setup.

Reply

Answer 3

womanofkent Author

Level 1

10 points

Oct 22, 2017 10:09 AM in response to den.thed

I'm not sure what's going on at Apple. When I purchased the IMac last year I took my time machine back up and was told then too that the best way was to use migration assistant after I had set up the machine.

This time I was told that it could be slow as it wasn't migrated properly and that can happen if you don't set it up first and then migrate.

Who knows

Reply

Answer 4

Nov 29, 2017 11:56 AM in response to womanofkent

I am going from a MacBook Air running High Sierra on an APFS volume put into target disk mode to a new MacBook Pro running High Sierra with Migration Assistant. When attempting to migrate the specified user, I arrive to the Replace or Keep options, but cannot replace the user. These computers have specific configurations applied before migration, so migrating on a fresh install of High Sierra is not an option.

Reply

Answer 5

rory119

Level 1

4 points

Jan 9, 2018 10:02 AM in response to BenSAdmin

I am having the exact same problem. Any update on this?

Reply

Answer 6

umdkevin

Level 1

4 points

Feb 11, 2018 11:28 AM in response to rory119

me too

Reply