Marilyn had been using the same iMac at work for roughly ten years. When a new iMac was purchased for the office, the goal was to move her working setup without forcing her to rebuild everything from scratch.

I brought both Macs back to the shop and transferred her files, settings and applications over Ethernet. A successful migration involves more than copying documents. Bookmarks, saved information and important programs all need to be checked so the new computer still feels familiar.

One concern was Quicken. The old Mac contained Quicken Essentials, which was no longer compatible, along with Quicken 2017. After the migration, Quicken 2017 opened successfully and loaded the existing financial data correctly, avoiding an immediate move to a new subscription.

Microsoft Office 2008 was also too old to run on the current Mac. In this case, that did not create a problem because Marilyn was already comfortable using Apple’s built-in applications and did not need to purchase a new version of Office.

Firefox arrived with its bookmarks and saved passwords intact. An old Apple Mail configuration also transferred, but it had not been actively used in years, so there was no reason to rebuild an email setup that was no longer part of her normal work.

During a follow-up visit, Gmail messages were displaying question marks instead of normal text. The default font had been set to a custom font that was not rendering correctly. I changed the default to Times New Roman and restarted the computer. After the restart, the messages displayed normally again.

The new iMac was delivered back to the office ready for use. Her familiar files and working tools were where she expected them, while obsolete software was identified rather than allowed to cause surprises later.

Related service: Computer Upgrades and Data Migration.