I am trying to move files that I have copied from an old Mac that I no longer have. I did copy the old library. And I found the vault files each named with the full vault name. I am using an iCloud location and MacOS Ventura.
Things I have tried
I took these vault folders and put them in the obsidian folder.
The folders inside the vault copied appropriately; however, they were empty. No markdown files were moved.
I think I need to know exactly what old files I need to move to the new Mac and then what location I need to move them to in Ventura.
Should I just uninstall Obsidian and reinstall it?
Should I abandon the iCloud location and just store it locally and use Obsidian sync.
I don’t quite follow you in this section. If you have your vaults (on a USB drive, etc.), you can just copy them onto your new mac. If you were using iCloud for your vaults (iCloud Drive/Obsidian/Vault1, iCloud Drive/Obsidian/Vault2…) and you didn’t remove them, when you sign-in to iCloud/iCloud Drive on the new mac, everything should download. Make sure you have “Optimize Mac Storage” turned OFF.
Vaults are just a folder (with other folders/files and the settings .obsidian folder).
If you want to continue to use iCloud Drive, they go in iCloud Drive/Obsidian/. If not, anywhere* in your home directory will be fine. You then can use the Obsidian vault picker to point Obsidian to the new location of your vaults. I don’t see the need to uninstall. *[ I wouldn’t keep my vaults in ~/Desktop or ~/Documents if you have iCloud’s “Desktop & Document Folder” sync on. ]
I used iCloud for a long time with no major issues, but use Obsidian Sync now. I’m very happy with it.
OK, this is solved.
I just offloaded the complete vault folders, then installed and reinstalled the app. Then I uploaded the vault folders back to the location set up by the new installs.