How do those that build a new system from scratch deal with things like Hook urls, Mail urls and DEVONThink urls that you have created on the old systems?
One option is to just transfer over your User Preferences and leave everything else behind. This doesn’t get you a clean break, but it doesn’t bring along the cruft of old Applications, etc.
I export email for backup as .mbox files by year from Apple mail. I also import past email to the EagleFiler app for fast access.
Mmm, I really don’t like to have it spread out. All in one place makes it simpler to work with.
But I guess it’s a mindset kind of thing.
One more question (for now): Microsoft Office 2019. I reinstalled, no problem but now I need some of my settings, especially the Styles. I tried moving select files from Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office but it started tossing some errors and didn’t bring in any of the styles anyway. In particular, I moved …User Content/Templates, which contains normal.dotx but opening a new document did not have my styles.
Thoughts?
I could bring over a document and use the Styles Organizer to move them into normal.dotx but hoping someone knows how Microsoft has all this organized.
I prefer to start from scratch in the last few years. As some others have said I will take a screenshot of the apps folder.
Next I clean up my old computer before I move forward. Then I make a carbon copy cloner backup of the whole Computer.
Next, I set up the new computer with iCloud and other services and then install the apps from scratch. Just the main ones that I use.
Any other apps I can always install later if I find a need them in the future. This helps cleaning out unnecessary apps.
Next I can attach the carbon copy cloner back up to the new computer and copy over anything else that’s needed such as my documents folder etc.
As far as all the new computer settings go, I kind of enjoy Setting them all up again anyway.
I hope this helps - Dave
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Fun tip: If you select and copy the applications and “paste” into a text document, it makes a nice list for you. 
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Thank you. Such a simple but useful tip. I’ll to add this to my toolbox.
Work has come to the party, and agreed to a new 14" MBP with 512GB – albeit with a wait time of several months, sadly, due to stock shortages.
Problem is, my current 15" MBP has a 1TB drive, with about 750-800GBs in use… So, this is as good a time as ever to trim some fat, and remove some cruft all the way back from 2012.
Question: What about Apple Mail?
Work is all in on Outlook. So Mail is used to manage several personal Gmail accounts. That said, very little comes in monthly that is actually “actioned”, either in OmniFocus, or sent to DEVONthink.
Furthermore, whilst the M1 promises to see everything much snappier, Mail has been dog-slow over the past few macOS versions, to the point of being restarted multiple times per day, to get it close to a functional state. At least, this side.
This all in mind, I’m toying with not setting up any of my email accounts in Mail.app, and simply accessing the mail via the browser view? Apart from not having “local” copies, would I really be missing anything, given my context of not needing to action the bulk of my personal email? Point to mention: Can get mail into OmniFocus via the mail forwarding address, and DEVONthink also won’t be a problem.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Edit:
Think I will pop this up in a separate post/thread – if not dealt with specifically elsewhere already – bit tucked away here!
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Followup: I was short on time, headed to California for three weeks, so gave up on the new start but used some of these ideas. When I get back and have some time, I plan to wipe this machine and rebuild it from scratch.
For this migration, I used a hybrid approach:
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First, I did a quick cleanup of the old Mac. Dumped most of what is in Downloads folder, uninstalled some add-ons I no longer use, ran CleanMyMac X and uninstalled some more apps.
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Fired up the new M1 and installed my most basic items (1Password, Keyboard Maestro, TextExpander, Bartender, Backblaze, etc.)
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Installed and registered MS Office 2019 and Adobe apps (which defied my worries and both turned out to be easy).
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Then used Migration Assistant (which no doubt overwrote some of what I installed).
Working fine. Even if some cruft came over, the waaaay higher performance of the M1 (compared to a 2015 MacBook Pro) would make it invisible.
When I do my clean install, I plan to especially work over my Mail, which is a mess after decades of “collecting.” Too many accounts, need to switch from GoDaddy to Fastmail. Need to reorganize folders. I’ll tune into @BradG’s spawened thread to get ideas.
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This is one of my hot button items. I don’t like using email for a filing system. Too many pitfalls like email store corruption, backup granularity, and document retention policies. I prefer to export the emails I need to keep into a PDF and file that into my existing document management system. Never had a problem reading old PDF files.
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Agree, although EagleFiler treats email as a first class citizen so I usually just drag or use its function key to capture an Apple mail item. Avoids the problem with some mail items that convert poorly to PDF. I do wonder if someday I’ll find that email (.eml) files are no longer readable. 