Windows Migration Assistant-
Are you planning to switch to Mac PC from a Windows PC? You may also want to transfer all your data that you have stored on your Windows PC to your new Mac PC. The best way to do it is to make use of the Windows Migration Assistant.
Which data can be transferred through Windows Migration Assistant?
From your old Windows PC running on XP (SP3), Vista or Windows 7, the following information will be stored at the right place in your new Mac machine running on OS X Lion:
- Email – All your messages, IMAP and POP accounts that you have on Outlook Express, Microsoft Outlook, Windows Mail, can be transferred to Mail in OS X.
- Contacts – Contacts stored in your email accounts on Outlook Express, Microsoft Outlook, Windows Contacts, etc can be transferred to Address Book in OS X.
- Calendars – All the events and tasks you added to Outlook calendars can be transferred to iCal on Mac.
- iTunes Library – All your media content that you added to iTunes library can also be transferred.
- Files and Folders – Data stored in folders like Music, Videos, Pictures, Documents and Downloads can also be transferred.
- Favorites – All your favorite web pages that you bookmarked on your internet browsers can also be transferred to Safari browser on Mac.
- User settings – Settings like desktop wallpaper, user accounts, localization, can be transferred.
What you should do before you use Windows Migration Assistant?
- Since you will be transferring data from your old Windows PC to your new Mac, without having both computers on the same network, you cannot use the software to transfer data. So, before you go ahead, you need to have both computers on your home network. You can establish a connection between the two computers by using an Ethernet cable.
- When you transfer data, some processes like Windows Update or Antivirus update may pop-up and interrupt the data transfer process. So, you need to disable the installation of these updates.
- You should remember the login credentials of the admin account. Automatically, a new administrator account is created by default on Mac.
You need to be aware of the fact that you will not be able to transfer Windows based applications to your Mac PC. The reason behind it is that Mac is built in such a way that it cannot run Windows based software. All the Windows software is designed to run on Windows operating system computers only. Since, Mac is Unix based OS, it cannot run Windows software. Also, after copying the files, you will not be able to open your files in Mac. You will have to download and install suitable applications for opening those files in Mac.
You may feel like manually transferring all your data from Windows PC to an external hard drive and then copying that data to your Mac PC can be a good idea for data transfer. However, Windows Migration Assistant helps in fulfilling this task in an easier way. It makes it possible to migrate all your data to the right locations in your Mac PC.