Did migration Assistant twice and still can't find my files

Heya!
Brand new baby Mac user here. After 30 years with PC decided to switch.So bare with me with my questions that may be obvious to you but not me. I may also not write like a geek either.
I have a Mac Book Pro with Lion. I have a pc w Windows Vista Home.
I was able to connect wirelessly, download an app (Pages) so I know I am connected.
I downloaded on my PC Windows Migration Assistant Setup. Found Migration Assistant in MBP utilities. Followed directions on which files I wanted to "migrate"( I assume this means transfer over?). The second time I literally watched it. An hour and 25 minutes later it said it was complete. So I am wondering where is everything.? Did everything really move over?
I do have my contacts, calendar.. but where are my files ? my documents? How do I go about finding them?
I tried to search on the forum about migration issues but I keep seeing the action via hard drives? zip drives? Am I suppose to download everything on a disk?
Its been a very long day.
Thanks for your help.

Your documents should be here:



But it depends on when you ran the Migration tool. If you ran it AFTER you had already completely set up an account, then the reason you can't find anything is because Migration Assistant will have moved your files into a DIFFERENT account (since it can't overwrite the one you are using!).

And we don't want to use Migration Assistant, an app built specifically for this purpose, because ...

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Maybe because...... ?

Um, "after you had set up an account"?

chas_m said:

(snip) it depends on when you ran the Migration tool. If you ran it AFTER you had already completely set up an account, then the reason you can't find anything is because Migration Assistant will have moved your files into a DIFFERENT account (since it can't overwrite the one you are using!).

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So, um, what the heck is an "account" and how can I find where my data is, in said account?

---- Okay, so I rummaged here with some instincts (boring narrative below) and figured it out ... Apple menu / Log out, log in again. Now to figure out how to get all that migrated stuff into where I WANT it. More rummaging starts now.

=======
Boring msg that I was typing until I figured out what to rummage for - most should ignore:

Years ago I ran both Macs and PCs so I'm no total dummy. I was impressed with how well the Migration Assistant worked, but I did NOT do it when I first fired up the Mac, I'm doing it later. I was unaware of the consequences I'd face if I didn't do it right then, and/or the consequences of whatever question I answered about an account.

Now I see that I violated tip 1 in the newbie tips thread, "1. Follow Apple's intentions until you find a genuine good reason not to." Heh heh - "Do it our way, or there will be consequences."

So, what the heck is an "account" and why didn't Migration Assistant just move the data into the identity that was ASKING for the migration???

Another one of those "Trust us, it's really easy" things, I'm sure. Except now I'm 2 hours into dealing with the "really easy" that didn't work the way this newbie expected...

An account is a collection of all your settings and data. Recent incarnations of Windows have essentially the same concept. If you share your computer with someone else and they have their own account then the desktop pattern, monitor settings mouse settings etc, can be different for each user. It also means that if you store your data in the documents folder that is inside your user folder they cn't see your data without jumping through a few hoops.

deBronkart:

The answer to your perfectly sensible question about why didn't Migration Assistant transfer your stuff into the account you were already using is simple: because it can't possibly know which of the thousands of files (large and small) it's bringing over you want to a) overwrite, b) use the "original" one, c) use the "new" one. And even if it asked you, for each of the tens of thousands of files, settings, preferences etc -- you likely wouldn't know the correct answer anyway.

This is EXACTLY why Migration Assistant is intended (and even asks you!) to be used BEFORE you set up your new account and start using it. It's not a case of "do it our way" it's a case of "if you do things your way, we MAY NOT be able to figure out what you've done and automatically put things right."

It would be nice if Apple had a "merge accounts" feature for people who make this mistake, but again the same problem rears its head: once you've started using an account, you've already generated new prefs, new files, new data and new settings. Which one -- on a case-by-case basis -- should Migration Assistant use?

Luckily this is a pretty easy problem to fix. Move just the data from your Home folder in (your new and fairly empty account) into the Shared folder in Users. Sign out of your new account. Log into the "old" (migrated) account and pull the moved data from Shared into your own Home folder in the same location it was in the old account, carefully overwriting when you are sure that's what you want to do. Then restart.

PS. Just to be perfectly clear: do NOT move stuff from any folder OTHER than your own home folder.

otterear said:

Heya!
Brand new baby Mac user here. After 30 years with PC decided to switch.So bare with me ...

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Thankfully, no one shared pictures of that but glad you found your files.

chas_m said:

It would be nice if Apple had a "merge accounts" feature for people who make this mistake, but again the same problem rears its head: once you've started using an account, you've already generated new prefs, new files, new data and new settings. Which one -- on a case-by-case basis -- should Migration Assistant use?.

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Chas, I have the same problem as the OP. Migrated data(mainly bookmarks) from my Windows 7 box to mac. All seemed to go OK but no files found as, I now realise, a new account was created at the start of the process. My answer to your question about which account to use would be, surely, the account you already have setup and are using(I take your point about running the migration assistant at the begining but as a new user how are you supposed to know this?).

chas_m said:

Luckily this is a pretty easy problem to fix. Move just the data from your Home folder in (your new and fairly empty account) into the Shared folder in Users. Sign out of your new account. Log into the "old" (migrated) account and pull the moved data from Shared into your own Home folder in the same location it was in the old account, carefully overwriting when you are sure that's what you want to do. Then restart..

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I tried to follow this tip but saw nothing you mention. Home and shared folder where? in Finder?

I need a little more help on what's where if you wouldn't mind. I've had a poke around in Finder on both accounts and found nothing you mention above. I'm obviously doing something stupid but could use some more guidance(and your patience!) please. Thanks.
Rod

"Share folder in Users" - that's Mac HD/Users/Shared

"Home" - that's the one with the house icon; house = home - you named it, so we don't know what to call it, but it's also in Users

Ok thanks for taking the trouble. Don't have the mac at the mo so have to wait until I get home from work. I'll post back.

Ok toMACsh,

I now have the mac and I think I'm more confused than ever.
On the new account in Finder I select Go/Computer - this gets me to MacHD. Then Users/Shared. I can see two folders which were migrated from the PC. How do I get this data into the old account? If I go back up to the Users folder I only have the user account that was created as part of the migration.

This is driving me freakin mad because all I want to do is transfer my bookmarks from the PC to the mac. I wouldn't believe it could be so hard.


Thanks guys for any help

skimmer said:

This is driving me freakin mad because all I want to do is transfer my bookmarks from the PC to the mac. I wouldn't believe it could be so hard.

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Oh! Things are very hard on a Mac when we make them hard. Go into your browser on the PC and find Export Bookmarks. Pay attention to where it is saving the file. Find the file and put it on a USB flash drive. Now copy the file to your Mac. Open your browser and select Import Bookmarks. Navigate to that file and select it.

skimmer said:

Ok toMACsh,

I now have the mac and I think I'm more confused than ever.
On the new account in Finder I select Go/Computer - this gets me to MacHD. Then Users/Shared. I can see two folders which were migrated from the PC. How do I get this data into the old account? If I go back up to the Users folder I only have the user account that was created as part of the migration.

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In Users, all the account folders should appear. Find the two folders and copy them to the account folder you want them to be in. Verify that everything is where you want it, then delete the folders from wherever they were originally.

Do a backup first. When you're successfully where you want to be, do another backup.

toMACsh said:

Oh! Things are very hard on a Mac when we make them hard. Go into your browser on the PC and find Export Bookmarks. Pay attention to where it is saving the file. Find the file and put it on a USB flash drive. Now copy the file to your Mac. Open your browser and select Import Bookmarks. Navigate to that file and select it..

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This was my original intention until I got wrapped up in the whole migration assistant issue to 'make everything easier'. Whilst trying to work out what the flip was going on I kind of lost sight of my original idea but have now done that - but thanks for the sarcasm. I'm pretty sure the bookmarks were exported to one of the migrated folders but for some reason they definitely didn't migrate with the other data(yeah I know I can see the rolling eyes and the quote' of course they were in the original folder').

toMACsh said:

In Users, all the account folders should appear. Find the two folders and copy them to the account folder you want them to be in. Verify that everything is where you want it, then delete the folders from wherever they were originally.

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Yes the folders were there and I have copied them from the shared folder to the original user account before you posted but thanks for confirming that anyway.

Still need help!

I have read all of the threads and posts and still cannot figure out how to get my files from the Migration assistant. I only transferred pictures and a few documents and they are no where to be found. I ran the migration assistant after already using my MacBook Air for about 2 months. I have looked for other users of which there are none. So where did my stuff go??? I looked at the info with the documents circled and this is absolutely no help. I am fairly computer literate and cannot seem to find my stuff! Please help!

I have to wonder why you would even use the migration assistant if as you say you only transferred pictures and a few documents?

Anyway.... perhaps they're located somewhere in your hidden user library. Have you tried to look there?

Open Finder, click on "Go" at the top menu, then select "Go to Folder" at the bottom and enter "/Users/your user name/Library"

Look for the lost pictures and documents there. They may be in a folder named after your old account name that you had on the machine you migrated from.

jlberger0703 said:

CLIP.... I ran the migration assistant after already using my MacBook Air for about 2 months. ...CLIP

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will inevitably lead to this solution from chscag:

They may be in a folder named after your old account name that you had on the machine you migrated from.

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because when you run MA after setting up you account on the MBP, MA doesn't know where to put the files, so it stores them under a new user account, with the name being usually the same as the old Windows account, but it could be anything. Unfortunately, when it does that, it puts the permissions for those files with the owner of those files as that new account, so even when you find them you may not be able to open them for anything involving editing them unless you do the work of changing ownership of the files back to your current OSX account. If you search the forum you'll find several threads on this topic with some of them describing exactly how to do that once you find the files.

Migration Assistant lost connection - can't find files

Hi , I'm a complete Mac newbie. I bought a rMBP and used MA to copy files from "My pictures" Windows folder to the Mac after I setup my user account on the laptop.

During the transfer, my Windows machine went to sleep. When I turned it on, the MA couldn't resume the connection anymore.

I quit MA, and when I checked disk space, 80GB had been filled.

The problem is I can't find the "temporary files" anywhere:
- there aren't any jpegs or raw files
- there isn't any new user in "System Preferences-> Users & Groups", besides mine and Guest
- can't find any reference to my windows account ou machine name in Finder

Would appreciate it if someone could offer some guidance. Thanks

Because you ran MA after already setting up an account, MA put the migrated files into a different account it created. If your account on OS X has the same name as the account you used on the PC, then it created an account with a made up name. If the account on OS X has a different name, then it created the account in the name you used on Windows. To get to your pictures, you'll need to log out, and look at the login screen for a new account name. Login in there (either your Windows password or just leave it blank if you didn't have one on Windows) and the pictures should be there. To get them to YOUR account now, you'll have to move them from that new account to the Shared account, then log out of the new one, log in to your account and then copy them from Shared. Once you know they transferred, you can then go to Users & Groups and delete the new account and the files will be deleted from there.

Now, if as you say, there is no new account on the login screen, then the files were in mid-flight and to recover the space you may need to run Disk Utility, or Onyx to clear out the debris and try again.

Found them

Hi, thanks for the reply.

MacInWin said:

Now, if as you say, there is no new account on the login screen, then the files were in mid-flight and to recover the space you may need to run Disk Utility, or Onyx to clear out the debris and try again.

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No new account, but I found the files after enabling hidden files and folders.

They were in

Macintosh HD ▸ private ▸ var ▸ folders ▸ zz ▸ zyxvpxvq6csfxvn_n0000000000000 ▸ T ▸ .XMSandbox-tmp ▸ Users ▸ mig ▸ Root ▸ Pictures

As I said, I'm a total newbie and there are some pretty funky folder names in there. What should I delete? Do you recommend doing a fresh restore to the machine? I haven't installed anything yet, and I would hate to start clobbering my new laptop with useless registry-temporary-files kind of garbage...

migtablet said:

I would hate to start clobbering my new laptop with useless registry-temporary-files kind of garbage...

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yep, new problems. I changed some permissions settings to be able to navigate the hidden folders and now I'm having trouble accessing system preferences (permission error).

I'm going to erase and reinstall the OS. The right way to do it is over the internet or should I make a boot drive with the Yosemite installer?