Apple Migration Assistant
I have some Windows Apps (Excel, Word, etc.) on my current MacBook Pro using Parallels and would like to transfer them to the new 14" Macbook Pro using the migration assistant. Will it work?
MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 11.6
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Is your current Mac an M1 or Intel? My guess is that you have an Intel based Mac. Unfortunately, it won't work if the older Mac is Intel. Although the Rosetta2 translation works well for most software it's not going to work with a Parallels virtual machine for Windows. It's just too complex. It is not possible to run an Intel virtual machine in Parallels on an Apple Silicon M1 / M1 Pro / M1 Max Mac.
The Apple Silicon Macs are now ARM64 processors where Intel is X86_64 and the binaries are not the same. You can only run ARM based operating systems within Parallels. There is an ARM Windows but it's not easily available to everyone. There are several Linux ARM distributions that would work.
There's two possibilities:
Easier Option
- Avoid Windows altogether
- Install the Mac version of Microsoft 365 instead, it is very good
- Copy data from old Mac VM to new Mac
More Difficult to setup (not recommended)
- Install an Apple Silicon compatible version of Parallels on the new Mac
- Obtain a copy of ARM based Windows intended for ARM based Surface tablets (might need a Preview beta Release)
- Office is compatible, re-install it via 365 if you can get an ARM version of Windows running in Parallels on Apple Silicon
- Copy data from within old VM on old Mac to new VM on new Mac.
- There is some concern about running other software intended for Intel based Windows that will not work even in this configuration.