Changing the home name

I just bought a powermac g5 off my friend and the main user account is under my name but the home icon is still in his name and most of the computer information has his name on it. I don't want to re do the whole computer because it has a lot of programs on it that i don't want to get rid of. How do I change the home name on the computer.

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
Be sure your friend follows this procedure*:
http://www.macmaps.com/selling.html
You can't hold on to any software he doesn't give you a physical copy of, or transfer license of online.
- * Links to my pages may give me compensation.

Similar Messages

How to change the Home Name

Hi,
I'm on a a MacbookPro5.5 and for some reason, my Home name (that resides on the left sidebar) is still listed as 'Apple'.
I want to change the Home name and so I've right-clicked it and gone into the 'Get Info' window. But the Name field is greyed out and won't let me enter a new name. I've tried changing all privledges to 'read and write' but that does not seem to help at all.
I appreciate any pointers on this ...
Many Thanks, Frank B.

Mac OS X: How to change user short name or home directory name
Dave M.
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I bought a macbook air mac os x 10.7.4 from a colleague,how can change the home name.ty

i bought a macbook air from a colleague (mac os x 10.7.4) iw ant to change the home name how can i do it

Really, the colleague should have restored the computer to the original state before he sold/gave it to you.
Ideally, you would erase the drive, and reinstall the operating system to make the computer system "yours", entirely. Your natural apprehension is that you probably want to inherit all of the colleague's installed applications and files (some of which probably violates licenses for those apps and files), right?.
Provided that you are legally acquiring all these files/apps, alternatively create another admin user (you), and then login under the other user name and transfer all wanted/needed files in the colleague's home directory to the shared directory. Then login as "you", and subsequently transfer these files to your user directory. After this is all done, delete the colleague's admin account (deleting the old users directories as well).

In 'Finder' How do I change the Home name?

In 'Finder'How do I change the Name next to the Home symbol. I am using OS X 10.8.2

Hi, i see other people are having the same problem can it really be that hard????
I have just bought a new macbook with mountain lion after having a windows laptop for years. When i first set up the system i didnt change my 'home computer' (i dont know what to call this!) name and so in the finder sidebar it comes up with the name 'root'? Is there anyway to change the name of this to my own name??? I have tried going onto 'get info' and change the name and extension that way but it is greyed out and wont let me rename it???
If anyone has any ideas, it would be much appreciated!!!!
D

How do I change the Home file name back to Home?

Help! - How do I change the Home file name back to Home? My supplier changed it to Demo. I've tried pressing return, control click and Get Info but none gives access to change the name. Any ideas?

The Home folder isn't named "Home." It is named for the user account it represents.
Who is your "supplier?" Sounds like they're not terribly bright.
Can you provide some details on why they "changed" it. Is this a brand new Mac? Were you having information transferred from another computer?
It sounds like you just need to create a new account and get rid of "Demo."
While logged into the "Demo" account, go to System Preferences in the Apple Menu.
Click on Users & Groups
If the padlock is locked, click on it and enter your password.
Click the + button at the bottom of the list of users. This will create a new account. Fill in the information you'd like to use for your account. The account name is what will be used for the "Home" folder.
Once created, select it from the list and check the box to "Allow user to administer this computer."
You can then log out of "Demo" and log in as your new user. If there is nothing in the Demo account that you want, you can delete it from the Users & Groups System Pref.

How to change the "short name (account name?)" and home directory name?

Hi,
I recently purchased a new iMac and migrated account info from my MacBook Pro. I happened to use random account name during migration without knowing it will not be easy to change the short name (account name?) and home directory name. As a result, I am now having extremely confusing short name and home directory name on my new iMac.
I did online search to find out how to change the two names, but I could only found somethig like "enabiling root user and....." I have no idea what it was talking about and I don't want to take risk altering such advance set up manually.
Please advice how I can change the short name and home directory name safely without much PC knowledge.
Thank you very much in advance.

There are a few ways of doing this. The easiest method is logging into the first account and copying everything to an external drive (or flash drive or whatever), which changes the permissions so that others can see the files.
Then, login with the new account and copy the files over. Once they are copied, the correct permissions will be applied again (so other people on your computer can't access them).
If you can't do this method for one reason or other, you can do some terminal commands to change the ownership of the files. Login to the new account. If it is an admin account, open terminal and type the following command:
sudo chown -R -v yourusername:admin /Users/originalaccountnamehere
That should change the ownership of the files from your old account to the new one. At that point, you can simply drag the files into place.

HT2470 I need to change the home folder name. I just bought this mac today and my cousin put his name in because he had to back up his phone while we were still at the store so he could get a new phone and now my brand new imac says his name in the home f

I need to change the home folder name. I just bought this mac today and my cousin put his name in because he had to back up his phone while we were still at the store so he could get a new phone and now my brand new imac says his name in the home folder. This is very frustrating. I would not have let him put his name in there if I didn't think you could change it. Someone please help!

Delete his user account and create your own, using your name.

Need some help changing the Home icon name in Lion

OK, I want to change the home icon name in Lion, I've been following these instructions to enable root user, BUT
How to enable the root user
OS X Lion
From the Apple menu choose System Preferences....
From the View menu choose Users & Groups.
Click the lock and authenticate as an administrator account.
Click Login Options....
Click the "Edit..." or "Join..." button at the bottom right.
Click the "Open Directory Utility..." button.
Click the lock in the Directory Utility window.
Enter an administrator account name and password, then click OK.
Choose Enable Root User from the Edit menu.
Enter the root password you wish to use in both the Password and Verify fields, then click OK.
After I get to step 6, the director utility opens... the lock is already unlocked, I click it and it locks, click it again, enter my admin password... but there is no option to "Enable Root User" I only see a list of services "Active Directory", "LDAPv3" & "NIS". I'm lost, and I don't want to screw anything up here! Thanks for the help!
Dan O

You're looking in the wrong place. After you click the padlock, forget about that window and go to the menubar, top of your screen where it says
Directory Utility | File | Edit | Help
From the Edit menu choose 'enable root user'
Message was edited by: softwater

How can I change the location name my iPhone pulls up when I am home. The info that pulls is not correct?

How can I change the location name my iPhone pulls up when I am home. The info that pulls is not correct?

If the size of the iPhone backup is putting you over the edge you have bigger problems than just this backup. You really need to solve the fundamental problem of your C: partition being too small. Even if you could solve the iPhone problem something else will come up soon that will again challenge your disk space. New drives can be had for well under $100, and even a 500 GB drive is only a little more than $100. This would be a good time to upgrade. You can even clone your current drive AND increase the partition size in one step with disk imaging software such as Acronis True Image.

I traded for a mac; how can I change the home folder name?

Well I traded a PC for my first iMac and well...... I love it.
1. I'm running into a little problem though; I can't seem to change the home folder name to my name. Although I know it doesn't affect any of the operation of the system or my settings, it psychologically upsets me.
2. Also, is there a way to assign my Apple ID to the computer or does that not matter either?
3. I also see a little lag when trying to connect to the web, but once I do get on it seems pretty beefy, any suggestable reasons?
4. And the final question, did I make the right decision? I traded a Sony Vaio S series tablet (laptop/PC) with an Intel core i5 @ 2.30ghz for an iMac with an Intel Duo Core processor @ 3.06ghz. I've heard the numbers don't really matter but some clarification would help.

Trying to address some of your questions:
You state you are running Mountain Lion? Was that the original OS on the Mac? That is very important because:
a) if it was, the seller/trader needed to transfer the Mountain Lion license to you or it will stay with his Apple ID;
b) if he purchased ML, he is required to uninstall it before selling the machine because the license is not transferable, which means - again - that it is tied to his Apple ID (along with the machine ID).
Both/either can present some problems for you since ML is now tied to someone else's Apple ID. If you manage to "introduce" your Apple ID, it will no longer match the records MAS (Mac App Store) has, so updates or other purchases may present problems.
I would suggest that you either call Apple or book an appointment at the nearest Genius Bar and ask them how to proceed - that way you may be able to set up your own Apple ID on the machine as well as get ML registered as yours (although, as explained above, they may require you to purchase it for yourself).
Whether or not you made the right decision - well, I've never owned a Windows machine, so I can't answer your question since I have nothing to compare it with. Obviously, I use Macs...... you should be able to run your own test: just do what you normally do and see if it appears to take about the same time, is faster, or is slower.

How can I change the "short name" of my account?

I want to change the short name of my account because when my dad bought this computer for me he set up the account with his name as the short name and it has been bothering me ever since.
When I go to system preferences and then accounts my account is listed and when I click on it under password I am able to change my name, but not my short name because it is greyed out and cannot be clicked. Is there any way to change the short name on my account? I can't even delete my account and make a new one because the account delete button is greyed out when I click on my account.
Also, I went to my home folder and changed that from my dad's name to my name. This has reset every program on my computer to default settings! For example when I open my Safari browser a message pops up saying a keychain cannot be found to store Safari and asks me if I want to restore default settings.
So pretty much I've tried to change the short name on my administrative account, I reset everything to default settings and my short name is still my father's name. Can anyone help me out here?

Try this.
Or you could just create a new account and delete the old one.

Cant restore after installing updates how do I change the home user/account

I installed 3 updates, opps, this morning, and when I restarted the computer it had reverted back to old setting from 2004. I purchased the computer from a friend, and had worked hard to remove his stuff, now my settings mail etc are gone and the old stuff is back. How do I restore the computer to what it was before the updates took it all off? also how do I change the home from his back to ours? sorry, I am new at this and very very frustrated with the mac so far.

Changing the home folder name caused the problems, not the updates. The problems won't show up until you restart, which, in your case, was just
after the updates. See:
<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107854>
<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106824>
When you get a used computer, it is safest to erase the disk (with zeroing option), then reinstall OSX, update it, and get the latest versions of all the software you need. You should also run Extended Tests from the Apple Hardware Test disc to be sure there are no hardware problems.

Changing the short name at migration?

Rather than upgrading from Tiger to Leopard, I backed everything up on an external drive in order to do a clean install. When I to migrate I want to change the short name, or somehow bring what was under a previous account into a new one with a different name. Is this possible? Is it a matter of dragging and dropping folder rather than migration? (or would that mean not migrating applications?)
I can provide more details if needed.

No, you cannot change an account name via Migration Assistant. If you want to change the short name do so after migrating. Instructions are here:
How to change user short name or home directory name
Or, download the freeware utility ChangeShortName - VersionTracker or MacUpdate - and use it to change the shortname.
I suggest the latter.
If you create a new user account with the name you prefer and want to get your old account information into the new account then see this article:
How to recover a home folder (directory) .

Changing the screen name or computer name.

when i installed leopard and it asked for information on the computer name i put the wrong information. how do i change the computer name. i looked in accounts under system prefences and i changed the name there but in finder under places where there is the home button it is the old one. how do i completely change all of it to the new one.
thanks

Open the Accounts pane of System Preferences, unlock the padlock, control-click your account, choose Advanced Options, and change it. If you change the home directory's path, you also need to move its contents in the Finder.
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Changing the Admin name

How can i change the Admin name on my mac mini?

Do you mean the user account that has 'Administer this computer' privileges?
Once created, you can't (easily) alter a users name. ou could just create a new user with admin privileges and delete the old one( saving any data in the old users $HOME (~) first).

Changing the home name

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