Dull but desperate - Mac OSX - question on multiple user accounts

[VintageGardenia]

OK not really desperate but please can anyone help?

I have a new iMac and when I first got it I didn't have a reliable enough network connection or the relevant Firewire cable to transfer stuff immediately from my old MacBook - so went ahead and made a new user account for myself so I could get in and look around at its lovely shininess.

Got the cable later & did migrate my old user account. I now have two accounts and I am wondering whether there is a way of merging them, or getting the data from one to the other so I can delete one? I don't want to delete the new one as I am still too stupid to replicate things like the Applications folder in the dock (and I don't know what I am deleting). But the transferred account has e.g. iTunes, Mail etc and you can't share this data.

Easiest way is to bung it all on an external hard-drive and load it on to your other profile. Mail should be able to get all the messages from your server if you input your accounts into the new profile.

There may be a way to actually merge accounts. You could make an appointment and ask at the genius bar in your local apple store to find out.

Thanks - I was thinking about that but it seemed like such hard work I thought there might be a way of just accessing the data where it is now.

Crap to think how I used to know my computer inside out and these days I can't perform the simplest operation. Have grown into utter dud.

Genius bar - presume is a help section?

It's an appalling pretentiously named section of the apple store where they give technical support and fix stuff that's not working. You can make an appointment at your local store through the website. You need to take the actual iMac in if you want them to fix something for you (which would be a bit annoying) but I think they should be able to tell you what to do without it.

You can also move files using a shared area of the disk drive, the "drop box" which other users can drop files in to, or the shared folder in the users folder.

You might need to change the permissions once you get the file though. Give it a go and see what happens...

You mean put my music / photos / email data into one folder with sharing permissions & point the other profile to them?

I will take a couple of hours today to experiment.

I have also discovered about "Stacks" in the dock which are pretty easily replicated, you just drag & drop the folder! Very pretty.

iTunes and iPhoto can work with your music and photos in a shared location, however they don't really like it and I'm not sure I would recommend it.

What I was trying to say is to log in as the old account and copy the files to a shared area. Then log in as the new account and copy the files to where they should be, for example drop them into iTunes or iPhoto.

Gotcha.

OK will have a footle round this afternoon & hope I don't mess up my lovely shiny computer. I'll know for next time (ie in 5 years when I get a new computer again) to migrate from the first log in...

Thanks for your help