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Just about a year ago I found a brand new Mac Mini old stock which had never been sold previously. It came with El Capitan installed and I have it booting from an external SSD. It works just great.
Then I found an iMac 21" 4K with a fast chip, plenty of RAM and a 2TB Fusion drive on Apple's refurb list. On my recommendation, Mavis bought it and when it came and I set it up it turned out to be using Sierra as it's OS.
That's where the problems began! Mavis has had so many meltdowns because Sierra is not at all user friendly like either Leopard or even El Capitan and I have to admit that when she calls out to me to help her, it often takes me a while to figure out what the problem is.
At this point, what I want to do is to set up the Mini with her files and with the apps that she likes to use (she hates Pages and has done well with Word on her previous Mini/hates Apple's Mail app, so I want to get her back to Entourage).
Where I need assistance is about how to "migrate" her files and applications to a fresh external SSD which would have El Capitan as its OS? I was told by Apple that they would not/could not assist me if I wanted to migrate El Capitan, since they are only interested in having users update to the latest OS. NO!!!
Can anyone assist me with this set up? Make my Mini into one for Mavis to use, keeping El Capitan and adding all her files, photos and apps?
I do have a couple of external SSDs, one of which I use as my boot drive and the set up works perfectly as it should. Also, I have an additional external drive hooked up which has a bootable version of Snow Leopard, but I found out that it's not compatible with the Mini and it won't boot. I am able to drag fields and apps over from it, but otherwise it's rather useless.
If I can get everything working okay for Mavis on the Mini, I will then use the iMac and will have more questions about it.
As always, thanks for your thoughts.
GeneL
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El Capitan is not a supported OS.
Sierra still receives security updates and is likely to continue to receive support for another year.
Sierra is the better OS and the interface is nearly identical to El Capitan. From your complaints, I wonder whether the iMac is running "High Sierra" which is the OS released last year that's still a bit buggy.
Entourage didn't even run well back in 2001. It certainly won't run properly under El Capitan. Outlook from Office 2016 would be the current equivalent, but even so it has a very different interface from Entourage. It seems that Mavis has trouble adapting to new and unfamiliar applications and if so then she might be best off with Apple Mail.
If you intend to move her files from a recent OS to an older OS, you can't do so via the normal "Migration Assistant" route. You'll need to do a drag-drop copy of her data-files to the drive that has the older OS. One way to accomplish this would be via Mac file-sharing. Put both Macs on the same network, turn on file sharing in the System Preferences on the Mac running the older operating system. Connect to that Mac over the network from the newer Mac and copy her data-files over. However, this wont be helpful in respect of her application-settings and email. Those would need to be dealt with on a per-application basis and migrating email, in particular could get pretty complicated.
...Hoping that others can pick it up from here. I've got to get to work. Good luck!
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Swomething is wrong there, as Sarcany points out. Sierra has been really stable for me and seemingly for most folks, generally, and I can’t recall it looking significantly different from Yosemite or El Cap.
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Gene,
Boot the mini into Target mode (hold "t" at startup sound). When you see the Firewire logo floating on the screen, you succeeded. Now connect the mini to the iMac with a Firewire cable. You may have to get adapters to go from FW 400 or 800 to Thunderbolt/mini-DIV on the iMac.
Having done this, the mini drive should appear on the iMac Desktop (Mavis' account). Simply drag the data and documents, music and pictures over to her account in the mini (from iMac Finder window to mini Finder window, both showing on the iMac.
You cannot drag and drop Mail, Contacts or Calendar. You will have to export those from the iMac and import them on the mini. You can export them to the iMac Desktop then drag the exports to the mini Desktop.
You should install all the apps on the mini rather than dragging them (you won't get all of the pieces).
I think I have covered everything. I cannot help with anything dealing with Entourage due to ignorance.
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My new late-2015 iMac I bought last year came with Sierra. I updated my mid-2010 MBP with an SSD and Sierra. Both computers run fine with it, and it seems to support pretty much all my old software, even Mariner Write 3.8.0, Office:Mac 2011 (no Outlook or Entourage), Adobe suite version 3, etc.
The only problems I've noticed are that the iMac once in a while (not often) just shut down. No idea if this is a hardware or OS matter, but the computer starts right back up with a power-button push.
I upgraded from 10.9 (Mavericks), and don't notice many differences.
/Mr Lynn
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Thanks for the suggestions . Unfortunately, most do not fit my situation except for modelmac's, which might be helpful, but also a bit difficult for me in my present state of health.
I have been perplexed by the difficulty that I had in dealing with Mavis' problems. Some things were fixable as usual, but when in Safari, the menu bar wasn't showing unless I moved the cursor to the top of the screen, I could see why Mavis had a problem. Many functions were not shown or easily available. No longer intuitive.
The issues were numerous and, while I was able to eventually work through them, I was left with a strong feeling of unhappiness with Sierra.
Pages was not a good substitute for Word and the email app was awful compared with our previous third party apps.
You've all pretty much said that you are happy with Sierra, so I don't know what our solution can be, but after something like 30 years of Mac experience, it really bothers me to have this difficulty with a Mac OS.
I hate it that Mavis is so upset with her beautiful new iMac and that I can't figure out how to fix this.
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Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately, most do not fit my situation except for modelmac's, which might be helpful, but also a bit difficult for me in my present state of health.
I have been perplexed by the difficulty that I had in dealing with Mavis' problems. Some things were fixable as usual, but when in Safari, the menu bar wasn't showing unless I moved the cursor to the top of the screen, I could see why Mavis had a problem. Many functions were not shown or easily available. No longer intuitive.
The issues were numerous and, while I was able to eventually work through them, I was left with a strong feeling of unhappiness with Sierra.
Pages was not a good substitute for Word and the email app was awful compared with our previous third party apps.
You've all pretty much said that you are happy with Sierra, so I don't know what our solution can be, but after something like 30 years of Mac experience, it really bothers me to have this difficulty with a Mac OS.
I hate it that Mavis is so upset with her beautiful new iMac and that I can't figure out how to fix this.
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GeneL wrote:
I have been perplexed by the difficulty that I had in dealing with Mavis' problems. Some things were fixable as usual, but when in Safari, the menu bar wasn't showing unless I moved the cursor to the top of the screen...
Full screen mode.
Been there since Lion (OS X 10.7). Reverting to El Capitan from Sierra would not change that. The feature would be present in El Capitan.
When you move the cursor up to the top of the screen, click the green dot in the upper-left to toggle full screen mode off for Safari.
You may be used to the old behavior where clicking the green dot simply grew or shrank a window. That is now an Option-click.
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Sarcany wrote:
[quote=GeneL]
I have been perplexed by the difficulty that I had in dealing with Mavis' problems. Some things were fixable as usual, but when in Safari, the menu bar wasn't showing unless I moved the cursor to the top of the screen...
Full screen mode.
Been there since Lion (OS X 10.7). Reverting to El Capitan from Sierra would not change that. The feature would be present in El Capitan.
When you move the cursor up to the top of the screen, click the green dot in the upper-left to toggle full screen mode off for Safari.
You may be used to the old behavior where clicking the green dot simply grew or shrank a window. That is now an Option-click.
Thanks for the suggestion, Sarcany!
This underlines my issue with the new operating systems.
This function is not intuitive in any way. If you hadn't told me about it, how would I have ever known ?
That's a perfect example of why I am so unhappy with the new OS.
GeneL
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