Moving Mac data to a Windows PC

Excellent information. It sounds like it might not be a good idea to try to move the data, but to just have her use her Mac on the network as-is. It's a lot easier to just add a Mac to a Windows network, right?

There are actually many ways to move files from the Mac to the PC.   The one above is an option and definitely not a bad one.
    You can also send the files thru email, you can send them from one email address to another.  If the user has a Yahoo email account or something similar they can send it to themself and open it up on the PC and copy it over.    This is probably the cheapest and easiest way, but not very fast if there are a lot of files.

     If they are both on the same network and the network can have them talk to one another that would be the quickest way.

    You can also copy the information onto a CD or DVD if you have a Mac with a SuperDrive especially, or another type of CD or DVD recorder.   You can also attack a JAZ or ZIP drive to the Mac and then move it to the PC.  
     So there are many options.     When the file is on the PC what you will need to do is add the proper extension if it is not there.   For example a Microsoft word file is a .doc,  and Microsoft Excel is a .xls, a text file is .txt and so forth.

THanks,
Steven Stuart

Thank you for your input - good stuff. To speed up this process let me say the following: I own my own IT consulting business and have been in IT for almost 20 years now, so I don't need explanations of how the PC file system works with regards to filename extensions - it's Mac's that I don't know about. So that needs to be the focus here please.

For example: when you say I'll need to check to make sure the file extensions are on each file, is that because Macs don't use filename extensions, or.....???

Also, there are hundreds of files so emailing is not an option. Thanks.

Generally speaking especially older Mac systems, they do not use File extensions in the names.  The file types are inbedded in other places so that the Macintosh knows what application to open when it is double clicked.

    I did not know which side of the computer side you came from, I knew that you were from one side though.   I actually am a Computer Consultant myself, and own a company, but also work thru others.  I know Windows, Mac, Unix, and Linux.  I know multiple applications, and programming languages and so forth.  I am also a Web designer and Web Administrator.    
     I also try to write things so that everyone understands, I definitely do not mean to insult anyone.

    How much disk space do these 100's of files take?

Thanks,
Steven Stuart

Great, thanks Steven. I don't know how much data there is yet - she is horrible at returning my calls. But that is something I'm trying to nail down. I'm going back over there Friday to do more work and would like to have a solution ready to go, and I'm guessing that my solution will either be moving her data to the Windows network or providing a way for her to connect her Mac to the netowork. If you were pressed for time, as I'm sure you never are, haha, which way would you go with this?

If you can set her computer up to talk to the Network, and you trust her in copying the files, I would go that way, as it saves time for you.     If you can connect the Mac to the PC network, that would be the most time efficient anyway.   So if you can do that great.   There is a lot of documentation on what you need to do on one side or the other to talk to the other side.   If it looks like it would take more time than it is worth to connect it to the PC network then it would take to copy the files on to the floppy disk or whatever medium you decide to use, then do not bother.    In some networks it is very time consuming unless it is already set up for it.

    I do hope that all of this has helped and thankyou for the acceptance already, please let me know if you need anything else, when you are doing this on Friday.


Thanks,
Steven Stuart

Hello,

I am a newcommer in this business and I have a question regarding file transfer.
I am in process of buying a new vaio K-33 notebook and I was wondering how to transfer my files from a Imac G3 with MacOSx to the notebook.

I do need help on that, thank you.

21n5

you should open up your own question

-or-

it's answered above

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http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=75320 and think in reverse