Migrating from a damaged Mac
QI used a housekeeping utility to remove apps from my old Mac before switching to my new M1 iMac. It has gone too far, damaging some so I can’t migrate. How can I restore them ready to migrate? bySIMON SIMPSON
AThis is one of the dangers of these utilities, and it’s always best to do your own housekeeping, erring on the side of safety. You now have two choices: use your backups to restore to your old Mac before migrating it to the new one, or use those backups to set your new Mac up directly.
Using your direct route, start your new iMac up without the backup drive connected, personalise the Mac, and set it up with a new user account, ideally using the same short name as your old Mac. Once it’s up and running, install any macOS software updates, then connect your backup drive and run Migration Assistant from the Utilities folder. When it asks you what to migrate from, select the latest backup made before you performed any housekeeping.
When it asks you what you want to migrate from that backup, take your time and ensure that you select what’s good to go across, then ensure that it’s migrated into your fresh user account.
If you intend keeping your old Mac, you can start it up in Recovery and either migrate or restore to that from the same backup to return it to its previous state, before the housekeeping went badly wrong. But by that time you’ll probably be content using your new iMac instead.