Migrate user's AppData folder in Windows 10?

Question

Let me preface this by saying I am not a Windows admin. I'm a Linux admin. But I wear many hats...

I have these laptops I'm migrating to be on our AD domain.

Details

• Windows 10
• Windows Server 2016

Each laptop has a local user with same username as in AD.

I'm basically just manually migrating user data from the local profile into the AD profile. Click and drag visible folders from local profile to Domain profile. Then recursively change the perms on the domain profile to allow Full Control to the domain user.

I tried several methods that would work for me on a Linux box that broke on Windows, such as deleting the Domain profile dir, copying the entire local profile as the name of the domain profile, and applying recursive Full Control to the newly created domain profile dir. This didn't work. I don't know enough about Windows to know why, though.

So I tried copying just the folders inside the local profile, and changing permissions on the destination. This seems to work, but I'm not confident this is not broken.

For example, the AppData directory. I'm not even sure what this AppData dir is for, except that it is (a) huge, (b) hidden by default, and (c) appears to store, well, app data.

Questions

• Do I need to migrate the AppData directory?
• What special precautions should I take if I do?
• What other things am I missing that are Really Important(TM)?

I have only three Windows laptops to support, and I don't have any Windows tools or options like Windows User State Migration Tool (USMT). Installing and operating something like that, or something larger and more complex, for only three laptops, is a non-starter.

Answer 1

Unless you have a very specific use case, I personally wouldn't bother migrating App Data, only some applications will work gracefully by moving it and honestly a lot of it just isn't useful. Move Documents, Downloads, Desktop, Photos and Pictures into the new profile, if you do it while logged in as the new user you won't need to worry about permissions (you will need to grant access to the old profile to the new user/use your domain admin creds/or temporarially make the user a local admin) and reconfigure things like outlook, etc manually.

Having said that, Outlook and sometimes QuickBooks do store data there. If your user is storing email offline (old POP account, they set up an archive, or if they have a previous company/employee's PST) you will need to pull that out of the App Data folder and attach it to the Outlook profile. Bookmarks and favorites will also need to be moved manually, but that takes <10 seconds.

Before you leave, have the user launch the applications they use regularly and ensure all the data they need is there and don't delete anything for a couple weeks to give the user time to figure out if they are missing things.

Good luck with your migration!