If you create a Word document on your Mac and save it to a synchronized folder, it will automatically upload to the service’s online storage site and then download it to the second computer. What is synchronization? It is automatic copying of files between two devices. If you are coming from Windows and already use Windows Live Mesh, it too works on a Mac, but we think these other solutions are better. If you have a lot of files to keep synchronized on both Mac and Windows, then services like DropBox or SugarSync are great tools. Video files work best on Mac with M4V, MOV, MPGĭropBox or SugarSync – For Syncing Lots of Files Between OS X and Windows.Almost any picture file format including JPG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, BMP.RTF (can be read by Macs with Text Edit app).PDF (can be read by Macs with Preview app).Word, Excel, PowerPoint (can be read by Office and iWork).If you have problems, do a Save As in the program and choose one of the following formats: Most file formats that can be created on a Windows computer can be read by software on a Mac. It is much easier when going from a Windows computer to a Mac. Select it and then choose Word Document from the drop down list. In Pages go to File, choose Save As, and then look for the drop down box at the bottom. For example, in Pages, Numbers or Keynote on a Mac, save your files in formats that are compatible with Microsoft Office. Otherwise, be sure to save files on the Mac in a format that your Windows computers can read or vice versa. We have a guide to show you how to do that if that is your issue. For example it is not easy to read files created in Pages on a Mac when they are on a Windows computer. When moving between Windows and a Mac, file formats can be in issue. Now you can take the drive to the other computer and have access to the files you want. The first time will take a long time, but after that it just grabs new or changed files. Just plug in the drive and it finds the files in your user or home folder and copies them over. If you want it to be more automatic, one solution might be Clickfree’s USB backup drives.

On Windows you would use Windows Explorer and on a Mac you would use Finder. Take the drive to the other computer and plug it in and copy it wherever you want it. If you only need to occasionally transfer a few files, the fastest way is to just get a USB hard drive or flash drive and plug it into the source computer, copy it over and then unplug it. We will show you four strategies on how to keep your files in sync and shared between your MacBook and a Windows Notebook. For those who work in multiple operating systems (Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X) one challenge is getting files transferred between the two.

How to migrate data from pc to mac