Migration Assistant Won't Work

Question

Migration Assistant Won't Work

I recently received a new MacBook Air and am looking to use migration assistant to transfer my data from my old MacBook Pro. However, I am receiving a "the selected source cannot be used for migration. This source contains a newer release of macOS. Your Mac requires an upgrade before you can migrate from this source" warning. My old Mac is running Sequoia 15.2 and is showing that it's up to date. Why won't Migration Assistant work? Does anyone have any suggestions to get this working or other easy ways to transfer data? Thanks!

Posted on Jan 17, 2025 8:26 AM

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Answer 1

gsyrba

Level 2

388 points

Mar 19, 2025 6:58 AM in response to sadhugeorge

sadhugeorge wrote:

I know how to upgrade a Mac,,But, there is no Apple logo showing, no icons showing, just black screen then the Language,country messages.

Does it allow you to select your language, country, and the other steps like a normal set up on a Mac? Or is it frozen at this point? I guess I don't understand from that little bit of info if you are to the point where you sign in to your Apple account.

If so, maybe you should try just hooking up a USB-C cable between the two instead of using Migration Assistant. I've done it that way before, and it's pretty easy.

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Answer 2

Feb 22, 2025 2:13 AM in response to appleuser5916

I don't know why Apple makes things difficult all the time.

I have both machines on 15.3.1, doesn't matter it's not working. Really fed up wasting hours on this.

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Answer 3

gsyrba

Level 2

388 points

Jan 17, 2025 8:30 AM in response to appleuser5916

Are both devices on Sequoia 15.2? If not, that might be the problem. My old iMac was up to date, but my new iMac was one update behind, and I hd the same error. Updating the new iMac fixed the issue.

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Answer 4

Tesserax

Level 10

157,380 points

Jan 17, 2025 9:44 AM in response to appleuser5916

Pretty much everyone has provided you the answer to the "why."

The bottom line? Migration Assistant only works when the destination Mac has the same or newer version of macOS than that running on the source Mac.

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Answer 5

gsyrba

Level 2

388 points

Mar 18, 2025 7:38 AM in response to sadhugeorge

sadhugeorge wrote:

how did you upgrade the new Mac? I can't get past set up. Maybe because I'm 80?

No, your age has nothing to do with it. I'm old myself.

Click on the apple logo in the upper left of the screen. When the dropdown menu appears, click "System Settings". Click "General" in the left side column, then "Software Update" in the right column. It will search to see if your Mac is up to date. If not, it's pretty easy to follow the prompts to update the software. You should be updating to Sequoia 15.3.2 as of today. Then do the same thing on the new Mac. Now you should be able to use Migration Assistant.

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