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How is it possible to transfer all my information from dashboard(in stickies) to my new macbook pro? Is there an easy file just to transfer or do I have to copy and paste them to an email? Also I have 10.6 running on my macbook and 10.7 on my new macbook pro if this makes a difference in how you can transfer them.

daviesgeek
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Dean
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  • Do you want all the information from your dashboard, or all the information from the Stickies widget on your dashboard to transfer? – Daniel Jan 06 '12 at 14:29

4 Answers4

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All of the preferences/info from Apple supplied Dashboard widgets resides in ~/Library/Preferences. Do a search for anything beginning with widget-com.apple.widget - those are all your widgets.

For stickies specifically, copy widget-com.apple.widget.stickies.plist to the ~/Library/Preferences folder in your new machine, and you'll be all set.

chrismanderson
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  • This doesn't work. – Dean Oct 04 '11 at 00:54
  • Well it should work. I found the [same answer](https://discussions.apple.com/message/6542464#6542464) in the apple discussions. It was confirmed to be working. – gentmatt Jan 05 '12 at 16:50
  • @gentmatt `widget-com.apple.widget.stickies.plist` does contain the data in my stickies. If I edit it, the changes won't get reflected to the Dashboard, but the edits stay in the file even if I open & close Dashboard. If I edit a stickie via Dashboard, the mentioned `plist` file will be rewritten by the system and contain *only* the stickie that was edited. Nevertheless, other stickies stay as they were even if the `plist` contains only one stickie's data. – Jari Keinänen Jan 05 '12 at 18:13
  • Refer to Daniel's answer for the second half of the solution. Additionally, rebooting will load the plist. Logging out wasn't enough for my computer (OS X 10.10.3). – Steven Vachon May 07 '15 at 23:39
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While it is true that ~/Library/Preferences/widget-com.apple.widget.stickies.plist contains the data associated with each widget, the file ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dashboard.plist contains information that causes the individual sticky widgets to be displayed.

If you hope to transfer stickies from one machine to another, both of these files will need to be copied. Note that this will clobber all the widgets on the target machine, not just Stickies. If this is not the desired behavior, some judicious plist editing could merge in just the entries for Stickies.

Daniel
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Why not just use the User Migration Assistant? It will transfer everything over from your account on the old machine.

One bit of advice: If your account name on the old machine is the same as your account name on the new machine, it may not transfer. I'd recommend creating and logging on to a temporary administrator account (in System Preferences -> Accounts), rename your account on the new machine if necessary, and run the user migration assistant from the temporary admin account.

Kasey Speakman
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How many stickies do you have? Why not just copy the text out of the stickies and email it to yourself? Then check your email on the new machine and copy the text back into a new set of stickies.

daGUY
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