Transferring Files from Old iMac to New Mac Mini and Preparing Mac to Donate

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I have a 2006 iMac with a bad screen that I have connected to an external monitor. I recently purchased a Mac Mini and would now like to transfer all my files to the new Mac Mini, but learned that my iMac is too old to be used with migration assistant, so I've been transferring my photos and music files to CD-R discs and have spent 48 hours going through 7000 email messages in Apple Mail that I've narrowed down to 3000 that I want to keep. So basically what's left is 3000 emails in Apple Mail and a lot of (about 800) .pdf and .txt files scattered throughout different folders that I would like to keep. How/what is the easiest way to put these documents and old emails on a USB flash drive all at once?

Secondly, once I have deleted all files from my old iMac, what's the simplest way to pepare it for donation to where the next person couldn't uncover anything or the computer would have no trace that I owned it?

Going through 8 years worth of old emails and files is frustrating. I hope transferring these files to an external USB drive is less so.
 

Rod


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Your Mac's Specs
2021 M1 MacBook Pro 14" macOS 14.4.1, Mid 2010MacBook 13" iPhone 13 Pro max, iPad 6, Apple Watch SE.
Firstly, get your self a USB hard drive big enough to store everything on your Mac Mini. Format it using Disk Utility for Time Machine. Run Time machine on your old Mac. When completed eject the USB HD and unplug it. You can put it aside for later use backing up your Mac Mini.
As for preparing your old Mac for resale;
What to do before selling or giving away your Mac - Apple Support
Follow all these steps and you will have no problems later.
Now when you start up your new Mac Mini you will be offered the opportunity to Restore files from Time Machine. If you follow the instructions to do this you can throw away all those CD-R's with your photos and music and files etc. on them because Time Machine will restore ALL your files to the new Mac Mini. Sorry!
Once done you can erase the USB HD for use as backup of your Mac Mini.
 
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Blue Mountains NSW Australia
Your Mac's Specs
Silver M1 iMac 512/16/8/8 macOS 11.6
Be aware the new Mac of any model will not be able to run or access any applications that are PowerPC. This includes older apps such as Office 2004 etc.
 
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Your Mac's Specs
2011 27" iMac, 1TB(partitioned) SSD, 20GB, OS X 10.11.6 El Capitan
A few things mentioned here that need to be clarified and sorted out.

If that 2008 iMac is still using OS X 10.4.x, it won't have "migration assistant" but used "Setup Assistant" instead I believe.

Also "Time Machine" wasn't even released until it was introduced in Mac OS X Leopard.

So knowing what OS X version that 2008 iMac is currently using would sure help getting a proper solution. ;)
 

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