Updating to Mac OS 10.15.6

bal

Well-Known Member
I have a 13" MacPro (2016) with Touch Bar, purchased about 2 1/2 years ago. It has Catalina 10.15.5 installed. An alert to update to 10.15.6 shows on System Preferences. When I try to update, it restarts but nothing is downloaded or installed. Have done this numerous times with the same result. Could it be because there is not enough available memory? (14.51 GB available of 250.69 GB If not this, what am I doing wrong? Never had this type of problem before. Thanks.
Bal
 

chas_m

Well-Known Member
Yes, the problem is almost certainly due to not enough space available. As a rule of thumb, a minimum of 10 percent of the drive’s capacity should be left available for working room at all times. You are presently well below that.

installers also need more available space during the install that when they are finished. Some spring cleaning and offloading of large files/groups of files is definitely in order!
 

bal

Well-Known Member
Thanks Chas.

This is a stupid question and I think I know the answer but need to have it confirmed. I have an Office 365 subscription but I have several old Microsoft Office apps and related docs. Will there be a problem opening the older docs if I delete the old Office apps or will these need to be saved first in the latest version? This is the only reason I have delayed deleting them.
 

chas_m

Well-Known Member
Depends on how old (they'd have to be really old -- we're talking multiple decades -- for Office 365 not to read them!). You can of course test this by making a duplicate of a sample document, then opening the sample in Office 365 (or literally any other Mac word processor). You should expect some possible font changes, but overall it should read no problem. Once you feel confident that everything will be okay with out the old Office installs, use the recommended Office UNinstaller (don't just drag the app to the trash) to get rid of old versions of Office.
 

bal

Well-Known Member
I had 2004, 2007, 2011, 2016. Mission accomplished. I did a back-up before removing them through Clean My Mac. I looked for an Office Uninstaller but didn't see one so used Clean My Mac. I also have an older MacBookPro which I keep for reading older apps. The older docs are fine. Thanks for your help.
 

DaveWT

Well-Known Member
Dick that is a hard question to answer without more Information. If you are moving from a much older macOS then there are things to consider.
If you are moving from 10.15.5, then practically none. But of course in all cases, do a complete backup first, as always.
 

chas_m

Well-Known Member
As always, I strongly recommend *keeping up* with minor updates to OS releases (10.15.x in this case), as these are generally bugfix and security updates, and have a very low risk of "breaking" anything. However, if you're in the middle of a big project it is okay to wait until that project is done before updating, and as Dave says it's always a great time to do a Time Machine backup or clone before updating.
 
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