Can I build a VM image from an old Intel Mac and run that in parallels or VMware or whatever on a new M3 machine?
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Old machine
- MacBook Pro, mid 2014
- macOS Mojave Version 10.14.6
- 2.2 GHz intel Core i7
- 16 GB RAM
- 250 GB SDD
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New Machine
- MacBook Air, 2024
- macOS Sonoma 14.3
- Apple M3
- 8 GB RAM
- 250 GB SDD
All I really need here is one program (Outlook; see below), I could delete everything else except the OS and Outlook to make the image smaller. But is it possible to virtualize an intel Mac onto an M3 one? If so, how? And what virtualization tool should I use? I found this post that mentions something called UTM, is that my only choice?
Finally, given the context below, is there a simpler way here? All I really want to do is duplicate her email setup but it is too large to be imported.
More context, to avoid an XY problem
I am helping my septuagenarian mother migrate from her old MacBook Pro to her new MacBook Air. This has mostly worked surprisingly well using macOS’s migration assistant, however, the one sticking block is her email program. She was using Outlook 2011 on the old machine, and has Outlook 2021 on the new one. Migration failed because the old one was 32bit and the new one is 64 (as far as I can tell, that was the reason).
I tried to export her emails to an .oml file, but I can’t import them because the file is too large and there isn’t enough space on disk. Or so I think. When I try to import, I select the option to import .oml, then select the file, and click on Continue, and get taken back to the file selection dialogue. It is only when I cancel the process that I get a message telling me I need 60GB free and I should check my disk. A similar situation is described here.
After reading various blog posts (I don’t know macs, I’ve been a Linux user for the past quarter century) I learned that macOS has some clever features that use up disk space, but it looks like Outlook doesn’t play nice with them and actually needs to see free space. So I disabled macOS snapshots by setting them to “manual” and that did let me regain a bit more disk space, but still not enough to import the entire 40GB .oml file I created.
I am trying various workarounds, but there are some constraints:
- She has her emails organized into local folders, and keeping this folder structure is essential.
- This is a POP account, so there are no IMAP folders on the server.
- Setting up a new IMAP account does bring in several emails, but the folder structure is lost.
- Outlook only allows me to export everything or a specific “category”, but not folders.
The best I have come up with so far is to place all emails of the past 4 years in a category, export those, and then import this far smaller collection to the new Outlook. I am hoping a VM might solve my issues.