Can I drag and drop from Time Machine backup?

[AbingdonBob]

I have just bought a new MacBook to replace my old one. I decided to make a fresh start with the new machine and not migrate everything across. I’m quite happy to re-download the apps I want.

I do want to move my documents across though.

Can I just drag and drop these from my latest Time Machine backup?

 

[Bigwaff]

Yes. When I did it, the Time Machine backup was on an external drive formatted HFS+.

 

[AbingdonBob]

Thanks @Bigwaff. Yes, my TM backup is on an external drive, APFS format.

I tried it and it seems to work. I’m a bit surprised since Time Machine is an incremental backup system.

PS. I’m expecting someone to come along and say ‘ yes, you can do it this way, but the problem with it is …. ‘

 

[Ben J.]

The last few years I've trusted and used Migration Assistant at first setup on new macs, and it's worked well.

I've not done this myself, but I guess you could run Migration Assistant (Apps/Utilities folder) and tell it to migrate Documents only. Might be the "safe" way, as Documents folder has a special status in the system, and you might avoid permission problems and such. Just a thought.

 

[AbingdonBob]

Thanks for the comments @Ben J. I tried doing that with migration assistant. It did not seem possible to specify just the folder which contains only my documents. Migration Assistant wanted to transfer all sorts of other file types and other folders too.

I had owned my old MacBook for ten years. I feel a fresh start was probably better than carrying over all the detritus that a computer picks up over that period of time.

What I considered doing was to copy all my documents from my old Mac’s hard drive to an external hard drive and then copy those from there onto the new Macbook.

That seems a somewhat roundabout way of doing what I wanted when I have a Time Machine backup.

Anyway, it’s done now. I just hope I’ve captured it all.

Later today I’m going to copy (not TM backup) all the files from my old MacBook onto another external drive. I will then have a snapshot of all my documents just in case. Belt and braces!