New Macbook Pro user - migrate from windows to mac

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Hello Everyone. I'm so glad that I have just found this excellent forum. Really hoping for some advice.
I have been a user of sony vaio laptop, using windows vista for the past 5 years. Naturally, now that I have my nice new shiny Mac in front of me I would like to transfer/migrate all possible files/photos/vids/music/documents etc from my old sony to my new machine.
I have been googling all morning....read up a lot about the migration feature but it seems that by doing so, all the info that I migrate will be added to a 2nd user account on my mac...is this correct? I would like to be able to have all my stuff in 1 user account. Please can anyone advise me?
Thanks in advance...great forum btw :)
Cheers. David
 
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Welcome to the forums.
When you transfer your data from your windows machine the Mac, it will all end up in the user account you are using at the moment on OS X. No worries.
I assume you will transfer data using USB stick or a portable hard drive..... The process is pretty much drag & drop.
For picture, once you transferred them to OS X, have a look at the iPhoto application for managing your pictures collections.

Cheers ... McBie
 
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Thanks McBie
I was actually hoping to simply use the 'Migration Assistant' feature but in the notes on one of the apple support pages it states that:

"This process will create a new user account on your Mac that contains the data migrated from the Windows PC. It will not merge the information with any existing user accounts on your Mac."

Surely it's better to have everything under one user account?
 
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I have never used migration assistant before so I can't help you with that.
Give it a bit of time and other members will chime in who will be more knowledgeable on migration assistant.

Cheers ... McBie
 
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MacInWin

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MA will, in fact, create a new user into which it will migrate your stuff. To get it all into your account, you needed to use MA before you created your own account, back when you first booted up and it offered to do so. (You probably missed it, a lot of folks do, so don't feel so bad.) At this point you have a few options:

1. You can, as McBie suggested, migrate by transferring the stuff yourself, either through USB sticks, or by attaching an external drive that can hold the data and copy/paste it.

2. You can connect your Windows machine by network, share the files on it and copy them over the network to wherever you want them to go.

3. You can restore your Mac to factory by doing a complete reinstall of the OS, then use MA before you create your account, in which case MA will create an account for you and transfer them from the old system.

4. You can use MA to let it create a second account, but then move the files through the shared folders to your own account. If you choose to do that, there are a couple of threads on this site that detail exactly how to do that.

Frankly, if you don't have much on the new MBP, option 3 may be cleanest, but if you have customized it, installed software on it and generally don't want to go back to square 1, then option 2 is pretty good. Option 4 can get a bit dicey in that when MA creates the account, it sets the ownership of the files to that account, which needs to be addressed as you move them to your account. Not that hard to do, but it is another thing to address with that approach.

There are probably other ways to accomplish what you want, and I'm sure someone will chime in, but those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

Welcome to the forum, BTW!
 

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When you migrate from a PC to your new Mac, there's really no way to avoid having a second user account to which the data will be moved. What you can do after the migration is completed and all your data from the PC has been copied, is then manually copy the data to the proper folders in the first account you setup on your Mac. After that is done, you should be able to remove the second account the migration assistant created.

It sounds a bit complicated because you're new to the Mac platform but it's not. If you prefer, instead of using the migration assistant, use an external hard drive or flash drive formatted to FAT-32 to copy and move your data manually to the Mac. That might work better for you and perhaps less confusing.
 
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MacInWin

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When you migrate from a PC to your new Mac, there's really no way to avoid having a second user account to which the data will be moved. ...CLIP.
Just in the interest of accuracy, if you choose to use MA, at the FIRST boot of a new system, it will create just one account into which it will migrate the data. I'd say 75% or more of new users miss the message and the opportunity to do so, but there is a way to avoid two users. Here is the article from Apple on MA, look under the third triangle bullet item, "Transferring with the Setup Assistant that appears when your Mac starts up for the first time."

As I said, a lot of folks miss the opportunity and establish their own account before letting MA do its thing.
 
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Thanks for the helpful replies and for taking the time to explain to a newbie, very much appreciated :)
I think I am just going to restore to factory settings. I did see the option to use MA first time round but it stated that I'd be able to do it later (Had I known then that doing so would have meant 2 user accounts then I would have just waited)
As it happens, I have done very little to my new mac, I have added a few favourites to my toolbar but that's about it so it makes sense to just restore to factory settings and start again with MA.
So.... to restore to factory settings........ Is this a simple procedure?
 
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Link. Basically, hold down Option while powering on until you see the option to boot Recovery HD. Then reinstall OSX and restart it when done.
 
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Thanks Jake. This is prob a silly question....there's no harm/risk involved in doing this is there? (paranoid ex windows user)
 

chscag

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As I said, a lot of folks miss the opportunity and establish their own account before letting MA do its thing.

I agree Jake, and it's certainly something to take notice when turning on your new Mac for the first time. The problem though is when a new user is transferring from a PC to a Mac for the first time, they're going to miss that or have no idea what it means. The OP here was wise enough to ask questions and do some research, but I can testify that he is not the typical "switcher". In any event, your advice is good and should be followed. :)
 
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Thanks everyone...it's good to know that I have found a great forum where I'm going to able to get some great help and advice :) V excited about discovering all things Mac!
 
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Thanks Jake. This is prob a silly question....there's no harm/risk involved in doing this is there? (paranoid ex windows user)
All of life is risk, but on the scale of risk, this one is REALLY, REALLY low.
 
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I agree Jake, and it's certainly something to take notice when turning on your new Mac for the first time. The problem though is when a new user is transferring from a PC to a Mac for the first time, they're going to miss that or have no idea what it means. The OP here was wise enough to ask questions and do some research, but I can testify that he is not the typical "switcher". In any event, your advice is good and should be followed. :)
I think the misleading line is on that screen where it asks if you want to migrate. It says something to the effect that if you don't do it now, you can later. While that's true, it ends up in two accounts if you do. But a new switcher doesn't have a clue and reads that as, "Now or later, no difference."
 
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I decided to leave this until this morning. Followed your instructions but got confused and ended up simply reinstalling OSX which of course did just that!....So I was back to square one (doh!)
Anyway, because the proccess took a couple of hours to complete I decided to go for option 4 that you described Jake. I have used Migration assistant and all my files have now been transferred to my mac. But now I have 3 user accounts on my mac. the third one being ASP.NET Machine account??? what's all that about. I'm a bit annoyed really......I really wish that it was made very clear to new users that unless they choose to migrate the very first time the new mac is switched on then they'll have to either live with 2 user accounts or go through this rigmarole. Anyway....I suppose it's going to help me in the long run work out my new machine but I was hoping that it would be simpler.
So can someone please advise me/direct me to a thorough guide to merging the 2 accounts together or move the files through shared folders into just one account?
Thanks.
 
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ASP.NET is a Microsoft product. I think that if you weren't using a username on Windows, that's what MA created in the migration, given it had no name to use. Just guessing there, but in any case, once the file transfers are done, you can delete the user.

As for moving the files, the Shared folders are on your HD. So go to Macintosh HD/Users/Shared and that's where the files will need to go. Log out of YOUR account and log into the account where the data is stored, then use Finder to move the files you want to the Shared user location. Then log out again and log in as you, navigate to that same Shared user and move the files from there to where you want them to be. Once all that is done, you can delete the two unwanted accounts. If you truly MOVE and not COPY the files from the temporary users to Shared, you won't be duplicating data and the move should be quick. But if you copy, all you lose is time and temporarily some disk space. I think in the deletion of the account the files will be purged from their home folders, but if you want to make sure, before you purge the accounts log into those accounts and delete everything from the Home folder. That should fix it all for you. I know it's frustrating, but because you simply reinstalled OSX, it remembered your account, so MA just did what MA does, again. A so-called "clean" install would have wiped out your account, so MA would have created just ONE account when you executed it. But at this point, the Shared folder transition should work just fine.
 
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chas_m

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I'm a little confused. You say you did a reinstall of OS X which put you back to square one, but then ... for some reason ... didn't do option 3 listed above, which would have, you know, fixed the issue. Since you could go back to square one, why not give that one a try?
 
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@chas_m, I took what he said to be that he didn't do a full clean install, just reinstalled over what was there, which meant that his accounts were preserved. When he ran MA, it created yet another account, as expected. He's not a square one in the sense of a new system, but square one in that he's right where he was when he originally posted, only now with three accounts instead of two.
 
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Apologies for the delay in replying, and for the confusion….my fault….bad choice of words on my part.
Yes, as stated above I meant that I was back to square one in terms of me right back to where I was when I originally posted. Thanks for your patience and for helping me with this.
So now I have 2 options, I can either use the shared folder facility to move all my files into the one account, or I could just start again….this time making sure that I do actually follow the instructions correctly so that I start with a clean system.
 
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MacInWin

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Yep, those are the options. What I would do is compare the time it took you to reformat/reinstall and then transfer from Windows with what it might take to use the Shared approach (you can try a few files to see) and make the decision based on which one appears to be faster.
 

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