Moving my wife's user folder to my MacPro while her iMac is in the shop

My wife's iMac needs to make yet another trip to the shop, and I was wondering about the best way to move her information to my MacPro while her computer is being serviced. We have TimeMachine backups and copies of her User folder. I tried a straight copy and ran into permission issues. I also tried restoring from her time machine back which was on an external drive but was unsuccessful. At a minimum she needs her email, desktop folders, documents folder, and Firefox and Safari data. In frustration I have deleted the initial user account I created for her. I was also thinking that I probably would not want to copy everything in her user folder because our hardware and software are not exactly the same, but then I would expect that hardware settings are not stored in individual user folders.

William Martin, RM wrote:
I tried a straight copy and ran into permission issues.
Try this:
1. Make sure you have deleted any initial user account that you made for her on your Mac. (There should be no left over home folder with her original account's short name in your root level /Users/ folder or in a "Deleted Users" folder in that folder.)
2. Using the Finder, copy her entire home folder from the copy you made to the root level /Users/ folder of your Mac. You should do this from an admin account & will have to click the "Authenticate" button in the warning dialog to get permission to modify the /Users/ folder. Enter your admin account name if it is not already there in the authentication window & that account's password.
3. Create a new user account for her in System Preferences > Accounts, making sure you use exactly the same short name of that home folder for the *Account Name*, & to keep things simple also enter the same Password & Full Name her account on her Mac used. When you click the "Create Account" button, you should be notified that a home folder already exists for this account name & asked if the new account should use it. Reply that you do & the new account should be good to go.
Your wife should not have any significant problems using this account because of differences between the Macs. The worst that is likely to happen is some windows may open up in unusual positions or sizes, which can usually easily be corrected by just resizing or repositioning the window. For a few odd problems, it might be necessary to delete a related user preference file, but for the most part the OS will disregard inappropriate preference values & replace them with defaults suitable for the Mac it is running on.
Message was edited by: R C-R

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Marc.
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