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svenmany

macrumors demi-god
Original poster
Jun 19, 2011
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I recall that restoring from Time Machine used to provide the option of restoring to a folder which is different than the original location. I think the option to do that was in the context menu on the particular file and it was labeled "restore xyz to...". When selecting that, I would get the file chooser dialog allowing me to select the location. Now, with the same "..." menu item, the restore only goes to the current folder. If there's a conflict, I'm prompted with choices of how to handle the collision.

A menu choice ending with "..." means that no action is taken until further information is gotten from the user. However, if the file is missing from the original location, the file is restored without any dialog. I suspect the label with the "..." is a holdover from the time it used to behave in the way I want, allowing me to select the target folder for the restore.

To work around the lack of the functionality, I just do a copy of the file, exit Time Machine, and then paste the file. I guess that's good enough, but I haven't exercised that with large restores.

Can anyone confirm that this is the behavior they see, that there is no option to choose a target folder for the restore? And, do you recall that it used to be different, allowing the selection of the target folder?
 
I think the option to do that was in the context menu on the particular file and it was labeled "restore xyz to...". When selecting that, I would get the file chooser dialog allowing me to select the location.
And, do you recall that it used to be different, allowing the selection of the target folder?

I certainly remember it working the way you describe in Monterey, always providing a dialog box to choose a destination. I’m not using TM on my Sequoia machine so I can’t say how it works now. My guess is that you’re seeing a bug. ☹️
 
I certainly remember it working the way you describe in Monterey, always providing a dialog box to choose a destination. I’m not using TM on my Sequoia machine so I can’t say how it works now. My guess is that you’re seeing a bug. ☹️

Thanks for that. I think I'll call Apple to get some input on this.
 
I seldom use the TM interface. Open the TM volume in Finder, get to what you want to restore and drag and drop to another Finder window - much easier.

Thanks. Yeah, I often do that as well, depending on how much I'm struggling with the Time Machine interface. The limitation of that approach is that it's far less convenient browsing backwards and forwards in time. I have 3 destinations; the TM interface allows me to consider all of them together when getting a chronological view of things. Also, directly access the volumes requires navigating deep into the folder structure and doing it repeatedly for various snapshots. Not a big deal though.
 
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