Home folder/shortname rename problem

So I've run into a bit of a problem with my home folder now. It started when I made my shortname something that I didn't want and so I tried to change it. I tried to do so in the finder side menu by just renaming it. Little did I know that this was the completely wrong way to go about it. I've tried to change it twice too before I really realized what was happening. So now in my Users folder, I have my short name main user folder as well as two other folders that are not associated with any user accounts. Upon making the switch each time, data moved to the new folder and is no longer in the original. The special windows on the left side menu of the finder window have also changed to default folder icons instead of the special music, movies, documents, and pictures icons.
So basically, I need help restoring everything back to the way it was (one home folder in the Users folder) without losing any of the data that's in each of the new "home folders". Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Geoff

Hi,
There is a much simpler way:
Go to your finder
Select Help
Enter "Rename Home"
Read the first Support Article
Here is an extract of this article:
- In the Finder, go to the /Users folder.
- Locate the new home directory, which bears the users' short name.
- Add "_new" to the new home directory's name.
- Rename the old home directory to the user's correct short name.
- Log out and back in with the affected user account.
Hope that helps

Similar Messages

HELP! Changed shortname of home folder on Mtn. Lion and now everything is "gone"

Hello all,
Last night I was trying to boot up a brand new MacBook Pro using the latest update from my external drive used for Time Machine backups. It worked great... and then I decided to follow Apple's instructions on changing the shortname (via using a command on Terminal) of my user account because I got married 6 months ago and wanted to change my name. Now, unfortunately when I sign in on either the new administrative account I had to create to do that OR the original account, I can't access any of my files. So then I attempted to restore the new computer from my Time Machine backup again to just wipe it clean and redo it. However, my Time Machine now says my latest back up is 8 days old and it won't find the backup I just did from my OLD MacBook last night prior to trying to boot the new computer from it. I didn't want to try to figure out what was missing, so I decided to use Migration Assistant over WiFi instead, but that is going to take an additional 7 1/2 hours even from letting it run for the last 7 hours last night.
SO... is there any way to stop Migration Assistant and just FIND the files that are "hiding" from me since I changed the shortname and now can't find my files? AND, if I continue with Migration Assistant, is it going to create duplicates of all my files?
UGH... HELP!!!!
-Katie

Well... I fixed it by using Migration Assistant over WiFi (which took oh, 14 hours or so). Once my computer had received all the data from the old one (for the second time), I was able to locate the home folder I renamed and delete all of that data so it wasn't clogging up my computer. Was I thrilled to wait nearly 24 hours after receiving my brand new computer to use it? No. But, at least it all works.

All Adobe Creative Cloud apps fail to work, creating new user Home folder fixed it.

We have Adobe Creative Cloud device licenses. I had a user contact me yesterday with these problems.
Adobe Photoshop CC 2014 - error opening, "could not complete your request because the file is locked do not have necessary access permissions or another program is using the file photoshop"
Adobe Illustrator CC 2014 - error opening, "the operation cannot complete because of an unknown error [cant]"
Adobe InDesign CC 2014 - would crash when opening, no error given
These same apps worked when logged in as a different user.
None of these worked:
I tried removing all kinds of user Adobe preferences, Application Support files, etc.
Deleted ~/.adobe
I fixed permissions on the user's home folder.
Renamed user's Home/Library to LibraryBak.
Uninstalling and reinstalling CC.
What finally worked was creating a new user and copying the contents of the broken user home directory over, except for Home/* level hidden files. (eg: .adobe, bash_history) Basically I just copied over the visible folders and used the Terminal to copy of the hidden ~/Library folder.
Does anyone have any idea what the exact cause was? What file/folder could've been deleted to fix this instead of the longer route I took?

This wasn't answered and I see that it's still not resolved.

Home Folder on external firewire drive

I copied my home folder to my external firewire drive and used the Advanced Settings in Accounts to redirect the Volume path to the location of my new home folder.
All worked well for about a week and then for some reason the path to the home folder was renamed and was una ble to be accessed at login. I had to reinstall SL and then redirected the Home folder path back to the external drive. All worked OK for about a day and then the same issue arose.
It looks like SL is renaming the volume from "/Volumes/WD 4TB/minimac" to "/Volumes/WD 4TB 1/minimac".
Basically it is adding a 1 after the WD 4TB
When I try to edit the path in the Advanced Options in Accounts it still is unable to find the original volume.
To date the only way I can fix it is to do a clean install of SL and redirect the home folder to the external drive.
Any suggestion to stop the volme changing name?

drive name changing usually happens when an external drive is not unmounted cleanly or if an application tries to write to that drive when it's not there. then a phantom drive is often created. in finder go to go menu->go to folder and in the resulting popup enter /Volumes
this will open /Volumes in a finder window. that folder contains mount points for all your drives. they look like aliases. there may also be a phantom drive with the name of the external which looks like a regular folder.
this phantom drive is the problem. when finder tries to mount the external and sees that there is already something by that name in /volumes it adds 1 to the name of the mount point of the external to differentiate it from the already existing item.
delete the folder for the phantom drive form /volumes and remount the external. it will mount without 1 at the end. of course this might happen again in the future and you might have to repeat the procedure. as I said, the main reason why this happens is when a drive is not unmounted properly.
Message was edited by: V.K.

Two user accounts using the same home folder

This may sound like a silly or goofy question, but I was wondering if anyone knows how to use two different user accounts, but with each using the same home folder?
I was wondering because there are many different settings I would like to use for different settings. Kind of like a "Spaces on Steroids." When I'm at school, I'd like to use one Network Settings, one desktop and icons, one Dock, etc. And when at home, a different set of each, but still using the same home folder.
Any help or suggestions would be most appreciated.

ZooCrewMan wrote:
So, I figured the easiest was would be seperate user accounts, "Home" "School" "Work" etc., and all have different settings, but still point to the same Home Folder.
The problem is, most of those settings are kept in the home folder.
You could probably do what Softwater suggests, with an AppleScript, or perhaps an Automator workflow, but it's not without some serious downsides. You'd need one for each setup.
At least one complication would be, any change you wanted to make to each setup would have to be done to that script; you couldn't just drag something into (or out of) the Dock.
Another theoretical possiblility would be to have separate user accounts, but use the special Shared user folder for your data. You'd have to select it as a souce or destination for each app you use, but many will remember that from use to use.
The complication would be permissions. When you save a document there, the user that saved it is the owner, with read & write rights. All other users have read-only rights, so could view and open them, but not update them. You'd probably want to create one or more sub-folders in the Shared account (for various types of files), and you could probably set a Folder Action on each to grant read & write permissions to anything created in them.
Then you could set up the desired network location, Dock, and Desktop for each user account.

I renamed my home folder :( can't get it back to normal

hi, i know there are about a billion topics in this forum about this same thing, but i still cannot get everything back to normal despite reading a lot of them.
a couple of weeks ago i renamed my home folder, which created a whole new set of preferences.
i've done some things since then, but i can't remember every step i've taken so bare with me! maybe you clever people can figure out what i've missed out/done wrong.
i remember that in the users folder i renamed the new (incorrect) folder to Stephen_new, and changed the old (correct) one to Stephen. - this was as instructed to by http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107854.
I also copied the whole library folder from the home > Stephen > library to the home > library folder, as instructed on step 3 on this website http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/renamehomerecovery.html (i presumed by 'home > library > library they meant home > Stephen > library). This gave me back my bookmarks and stuff.
however, in the home folder there was only library and desktop. now, when i add something to a folder (say movies) through mac hd > users > stephen > movies (or the shortcut on the left of finder) it creates a new movies folder in the home directory, and copies the file there too. i.e. the file is in 2 places.
also on the left of finder the icons for movies etc. have all gone back to blue folder icons.
so basically the problem is before if i wanted to go to documents it would be right in my home folder, but now i have to go mac hd > users > Stephen > documents to get there, or i could make a shortcut on the left of finder.
i'm not sure how to tell which users folder i'm actually using, Stephen or Stephen_new. I'm guessing it's Stephen as new files seem to save there.
i would guess that i need to change my users folder to the name of my home folder icon, but you can't have 2 things the same name in the same folder.
i created a topic at appleinsider.com's forums, which no one replied to. maybe some of the info there could help you figure it out
http://forums.appleinsider.com/showthread.php?t=71584
thank you very much for any help you can give me. if anything is unclear please ask me to explain further.
ibook g4 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

hello again,
i didn't really dare to delete the blue home folders before, just in case everything went wrong, but now i think i have so little space that i can't afford to lose 2.25gb!
one thing that slightly worries me is the fact that the 'proper' library folder (in the home icon) is 2.09gb, whereas the 'wrong' one (from the blue folder forenamesurname) is 2.24gb - this is the one i would be deleting. just seems odd to delete a larger file than the one i presume i'm using.
"Move everything you want to keep out of the blue folders, and then place both of the folders on your desktop. If everything works properly after a few days, delete both folders. If you are asked for your administrator password at any point or if either folder is copied instead of moved when dragged, don't delete that folder."
by 'everything you want to keep', does this include the library folder? 'cause there doesn't seem to be much else, and i'm not sure if deleting the library folder would ruin all my preferences.
i've put both of the folders on the desktop, it didn't ask for the admin password or try to copy them, so i guess that's good news. what kind of things should i be looking out for to act differently?
are the folders not in use now that they are on the desktop?
also if i put them in the trash will they have no effect? i.e. the same as permanently deleting them, so i could put them in the trash as a test.
cheers, stephen.

I Renamed Home Folder and lost all settings, jpgs, mp3s, photos etc. HELP!

First off, have a MacBook, 2.4GHz Intel Core Duo w/4GBs of RAM OS 10.5.8
I followed what I thought were proper procedures to change the name of the Home Folder from "macbook" to "rocki"
I followed the instructions at Mac OS X v10.6 and earlier: How to change user account name or home directory name
For Mac OS X 10.5 or later
1. Enable the root user.
2. Log in as root.
3. Navigate to the /Users folder.
4. Select the Home folder with the short name you want to change, and rename it just like you would rename any folder. Keep in mind that the shortname must be all lowercase, with no spaces, and only contain letters.
At this point I skipped steps 5 & 6 Since I already had a user named the name I wanted "Rocki" I thought I didn't need to do this. So went onto Steps 7-9, and NO everything was NOT there.
5. Use the Accounts pane in System Preferences to create a new user with the Account name or Short Name that you used in the previous step.
6. Click OK when "A folder in the Users folder already has the name 'account name'. Would you like to use that folder as the Home folder for this user account?" Note: This will correct the ownership of all files in the Home folder, and avoid permissions issues with the contents.
7. Choose Log Out from the Apple menu.
8. Log in as the newly created user. You should be able to access all of your original files (on the desktop, in Documents, and in the other folders of this Home).
9. After verifying that your data is as expected, you can delete the original user account via the Accounts pane of System Preferences. At this point I skipped step 10 b/c nothing was there as usual.
10. Disable the root user.
All my data and settings were not there. So I went back logged in as Root, navigated to the Users folder, and saw that there were two folders, one said "macbook" even though I previously just named it and there was also another folder named "rocki" there. Seeing two folders and wanting to return back to normal I deleted that "rocki" folder, I had just created, and logged back out of root and logged back into the only user I had, which was also named "rocki" which is the admin and the user that had all my files and settings originally before I tried to change the name of the home folder. And no change, everything is gone and missing.
To clarify, originally, I had a home folder named MacBook and a user named Rocki. Everything was cool and worked great! But I wanted to change that home folder name to match the user name. Whoops!
What can I do to go back to normal?!?!?!!?!? Please help me!! I'm so screwed. If I can't go back to normal, how do I find all the missing files and what not?!?
Thanks so much in advance!

Apparent 'Loss' of Home Folder:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107854

HT1428 How do I revert settings from renaming the home folder?

*PREFACE* I've read plenty of articles today on why NOT to attempt to rename the home folder.. This was done mistakenly by a friend attempting to help with my wifes macbook air.
While they were able to rename the home folder, upon reboot, all system settings are gone, and she cannot access anything on the macbook air. Basically I need any help on how to go about restoring her air to the point before this incident occured, if that's possible (and I REALLY hope it is!!). We only had one user profile on the air, it was hers and is an admin account. When I try to access files on the HD now I get access denied messages. Based on what I've read, I thought if I could get to system preferences I could attempt to rename it back to the original name, reboot, and things would revert back, but when I click on system preferences, it bounces up, and then the light under it goes out.
I own a time machine, and I have plenty of backup data there, I'm curious though of two things. 1st, how exactly do I go about this process, and 2nd, if I restore it, is it going to restore everything back to how it was before the rename happened, or would I have to do something else?
On a scale of 1-5 in terms of knowledge, I'm about a 3. I'm faily new to Mac computing, but I own several other Mac products. I haven't had to replace my current PC laptop (yet, but its days are VERY numbered), but intend to go Mac from that point on. I hope all of this gives someone smarter than me enough information on what my situation is and hopefully how to solve it! Thanks!!

Problem solved, time capsule worked!

Home folder: can't "rename" in finder per step 3 in Apple's HT1428

Ran Setup Assistant on a new MacBook Air and transferred everything (settings and all) over from my old computer (disabled) using its Time Capsule backup during Setup Assistant's original (and only) run.
Problem is: the home folder on the new computer retains the old computer's name. I read in quick "Help" (from Finder's top menu line) that "You can’t change the name of a home folder. If you want to use a different name, you must create a new user (this requires administrator privileges)."
But Apple publishes HT1428: "OS X: How to change your account name or home directory name," so I try it.   OS X 10.7 and later directions say:
     [create new admin account, log out of old, log in under new, and]
     2. Navigate to the /Users folder in Finder.
     3. Rename the home folder for the old account, being sure to make note of both the old account name and the new account name.
After logging in as new admin, when I highlight the old account's home folder name, it will not "box itself out" so I can change its name. "Get Info-ing" the folder (file) shows the Name & Extension grayed out and unchangeable.
So I'm stalled out at the very beginning. Any ideas?
Thinking . . . HT1428 gives a different procedure for home folder name change in OS X 10.6, using terminal to "mv" a new name into place. The old computer was 10.6.8 and everything about it came over during setup. Could it need the OS X 10.6 instructions?
And am I playing with fire?

I don't see anything different about yours from mine. I have no problem renaming another account home folder.
All the reasons I can guess at for it not being available you seem to have verified.
Copy and paste in this command in Terminal. Make sure there is a space after what you paste, then drag in the old home folder. It will list the ACLs and any Finder flags on the folder.
ls -dleO
You should only see this after the line listing the folder info:
0: group:everyone deny delete
In the first line of the output, you should see a - between "staff" and the file size number.
There isn't any difference between the move command and doing it with the Finder, except the safety of not typing anything wrong. I imagine the Finder calls mv when it renames, but I don't know for sure.

Rename original home folder after Set Up

I just set up a brand new Pro in a computer lab. I installed Adobe Master Collection, Final Cut, ProTool, etc. It took days....
I then discovered I had (stupidly) named the original Home Folder incorrectly during set up. Can I rename the Home Folder without screwing up all the software serial numbers and activation codes. I have already changed it to the name I want in the Sharing Preferences but my little house still has the original name. It also wants me to type the original Admin. name. I'm not the only Administrator so this is going to lead to confusion.

There might be some permissions issues with the name change. Unfortunately, I do not recall whether I changed the name of a user home folder or used the migration assistant to transfer things to a different user account, but I wound up having to clean up a lot of permissions problems so be sure to check that out before you turn it over to the intended user.
Good Luck with the Adobe apps. Some of them just do not take kindly to any sort of change.

User account missing files and preferences?? Not from renaming home folder

Hi all,
After some strange behaviour in Apple Color, upon rebooting, my user account has returned to default. I had many items on the desktop and various subfolders in the documents folder. All pictures. Music. All are now gone. Desktop and dock have been reset to default.
The user folder still exists but everything I had in there is gone.
Another user may have been created called "root" containing only
/Library
/Documents/Color Documents...etc
I am aware of the problem with changing the short name or renaming the home folder (after sifting through this forum) and it is definitely not this problem.
Maybe its somehow related but I definitely did not rename any of these things myself. And there is no duplicated user account with all my files in it.
Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers
Nate
ps. Is it possible to restore the system to an earlier time like in Windows?
I've read somewhere that a Previous System folder exists and it might be possible with Disk Utility but I can't find this folder anywhere.
Message was edited by: stoney23

Hi there,
Thanks for the reply. I've managed to restore most of my important stuff using a file recovery software so I'm at peace with the loss of only a few files now. I'll just have to start rebuilding my dock and preferences again now which is not the end of the world.
After a bit of thinking about it I'm 95% sure this is what happened.
Color tried to save an image file with the same name as the folder I had made storing all my Color project saves. The folder was called Post. I'm not quite sure how its possible but it managed to overwrite the folder with the new image file. Now there is a Color image file (with no extension) there called Post and no folder.
Then I tried to save the Color project and of course it told me the project directory was missing and it will create a new one. I'm guessing this is when Color bulldozed through my user account to create the folder Color Documents where it DIDN'T save the file anyway
Leaving me with a default user account deleting everything that was 'added' to the account previously.
It also created another user account called 'root' in which there is also only a Color Library/preferences and documents folder
Is that normal that things like that can just happen?
I guess from here I will just try and finish my project and afterwards do a re-install of the OS just to be sure - checking the Archive and Install option this time
Unless you have any other ideas from what I've told you.
Thanks again for replying
Nate

Home folder access problem

Hi,
I have a problem accessing my home folder in the sidebar of Finder and in general starting the Finder from the dock. If I click on the Finder icon in the dock nothing happens, if I click on my home folder in the Finder sidebar a popup message is asking me with which application I want to open my home folder!?. Obviously Finder forgot how to open my home folder.
Finder still opens a normal Finder window if I double click on an existing folder on the desktop but not via Finder menu bar or right mouse menu on the Finder icon. I can still access my home folder via terminal "/Volumes/myname" though. And in the Finder I can still see the content if I go to Macintosh HD -> Users -> myname and then do Show Package Content. It is just the link in the PLACES section of the Finder sidebar that doesn't work.
I have also tried dragging my home folder out of the Finder sidebar and putting it back via Preferences -> Sidebar -> PLACES -> select Home and by dragging it there from Macintosh HD -> Users -> myname
In Terminal I see that my home folder has read/write/execute rights for my user and none for group and others:
drwx------ myname myname
I have not tried to rename or move my home folder! And I have tried restarting and checking and repairing Disk Permissions via Disk Utility.
The exact error message when trying to open my home folder from the sidebar now is: "The document "myhomefoldername" could not be opened!" But this only came after I picked an arbitrary application to open my home folder with since he kept on asking me which application to use. An obvious choice of course would have been to use Finder but that one doesn't show up as an application.
Any more ideas on how to fix this situation?
Thanks a lot!
Matthias
Message was edited by: therealvinz

therealvinz wrote:
Hi,
I have a problem accessing my home folder in the sidebar of Finder and in general starting the Finder from the dock. If I click on the Finder icon in the dock nothing happens, if I click on my home folder in the Finder sidebar a popup message is asking me with which application I want to open my home folder!?. Obviously Finder forgot how to open my home folder.
Finder still opens a normal Finder window if I double click on an existing folder on the desktop but not via Finder menu bar or right mouse menu on the Finder icon. I can still access my home folder via terminal "/Volumes/myname"
that's not the right place for your home folder.
though. And in the Finder I can still see the content if I go to Macintosh HD -> Users -> myname and then do Show Package Content.
really?! maybe that's the problem. it seems that your home folder has been converted to a package somehow. it should be a regular directory not a package. you can use setFile terminal command to remove the package bit from it so that it becomes a normal folder. You'll have to install Developer tools (they are on the leopard install DVD) to get setFile. alternatively, you can pull just the setFile command from the install DVd using [Pacifist|http://www.charlessoft.com>. Once you've got setFile installed run this in terminal
setfile -a -b ~

The name of my Home folder didn't change when I renamed my Account.

I just got a new iMac and have been setting it up. Yes, I am loving it and now I'm (not so) patiently waiting for Lion to be released
However, I have a problem. When I first set up my computer, I named my account Jordan Hipwell and then signed into my Apple ID (hipwelljo). Then later I realized it would be nice to have another account that doesn't have admin rights, so I created it and called it Hipwell. Later on I decided I should rename them both, the admin account being called Administrator and the non-admin account called Standard. This is how it is currently set up.
Now when I go to finder, Macintosh HD, then Users, the folders are named hipwelljo and Hipwell. They should be called Administrator and Standard, respectively because those are the new names of the accounts.
How do I rename these Home folders?
Thank you!

I "renamed" my user accounts by going into the System Preferences then Accounts then changed the Full Name.
I am confused as to why it doesn't just change the Home folder name to match the Full Name. Apple even says they should be the same. "your user account name and home directory name (which should match)"
Nevertheless, after reading the article, I decided I should rename both of my Home folders to match the account names since they are way too similar and confusing at the moment. So I want to rename Hipwell to Standard and hipwelljo to Administrator to match the Full Names.
However, in step 4, it says that when you rename the Home folder, you have to make it lowercase. But Hipwell is the current Home folder name and it isn't lowercase. Sooo why does it have to be lowercase if it automatically made it uppercase in the first place?
And before I begin following the steps, should I rename the Full Names (Administrator and Standard) to something else so when I create the new accounts there won't be any conflicts?
And if I follow the steps exactly, is there still a chance there could be a few problems? Like modified settings or anything?
Thanks.

Renaming the Home folder.....

Hi Guys,
How can I rename the home folder? Any idea?
Thanks

Don't let the earlier replies put you off; I've now done just that on two computers following the article referred to by macJack, with no problems whatever.
I did however take the precaution of backing up to an external drive beforehand in case of finger trouble.
Note that when creating the new user, you can use the same password, but the account name will have to be different. For instance if your full account name is John Smith, alter it slightly (to John J Smith for example) to create the new account. You can change it back after all's been checked and the old account deleted.

How I Solved My "Can't Import My Home Folder" Problem While Staying Sane

This may be a well-known work-around for Time Machine and Migration Assistant, but I didn't find any reference to it in searching in Google (which included some threads here), so I thought I'd post it in case anyone else is experiencing similar problems.
I was having problems with some program install permissions and tried fixing them in more traditional ways without success, so I decided it was a good day for an Erase and Reinstall of Leopard.
I didn't want to copy my entire Home directory's contents and I have 6 HDs (four internal and two external) totaling about 1.5TBs. So, to prepare for the reinstall, rather than use Backup, I copied all important files to my other drives and then I copied my Home directory to another drive in the machine. Satisfied that everything was backed-up, I reinstalled Leopard using the Erase and Install option and soon had a good system, fully updated.
However, when I went to copy the Home Directory I kept getting errors saying that I can't alter these files and folders, even when I drilled down into the subdirectories. I didn't try copying individual files, but then I had no desire to do so given the amount of time that would take.
I looked around but could find no good solution. However, I did come up with a workaround and this is what I did:
First, I moved my Home Folder designation to the one on the backup hard drive by:
1) Go to System Preferences
2) Click the lock to make changes and enter your user password
3) Right-Click on your User Account and select "Advanced Options"
4) From the drop-down window, to the right of the "Home Directory" box select "Choose..."
5) Navigate to the backup User Account home folder and select it and click "OK
6) Relock the Accounts pane
7) Now you can delete the "old" Home Folder under your OS drive: Users/user account
8) Now just copy the backed-up Home Folder (that is now your real Home Folder) to the OS drive: Users/user account
9) Repeat steps2, 3 and 4, this time selecting your now moved Home Folder in the OS drive: Users/user account
10) Now you can delete the backup or keep it AS a backup.
I know this is a kludgey, wrong way to do backup and that Backup is the way to go, but for those out there who don't do it or have some problem restoring it, this is a possible way around so that you don't end up having to restore everything by hand.
This workaround may have already been discussed and well-known, but I had not seen it and am posting this in the hopes that it will help someone in trouble.
JoeL

joeldm,
There is a "proper" way to do what you have done. First, one must create an account within the new installation using the exact same username and short name that was used in the old installation. Then, one enables the "root" account and logs in as root.
Within the root account, the local HOME folder that was created for the user is placed in the trash, then replaced with a (same-named) copy from the backup. THat HOME folder copy will be onwed by root, so this command must be run in Terminal:
<pre style="overflow:auto; font-family: 'Monaco'; font-size: 10px">chown -R username:staff /Users/username</pre>
In the above command, all instances of "username" are replaced with the user's short name. For example, if the user's name is "fred," the command would be typed exactly like this:
<pre style="overflow:auto; font-family: 'Monaco'; font-size: 10px">chown -R fred:staff /Users/fred</pre>
The command is executed when <RETURN> is pressed. NOTE: The specific command listed above applies only to 10.5.
One would then log out of the "root" account, and into the account in question. If all seems well, one would log back into the root account, empty the trash, then log out of and disable the root account.
Alternatively, if there is a Time Machine backup that can be used, the Time Machine interface can be used in the root account to replace the trashed HOME folder, instead of copying manually in the Finder. This would generally be a better method to use, if possible.
Scott
EDIT: If one wishes to replace/restore only certain portions of a HOME folder, this is possible. The same methods would apply to only limited segments within a HOME folder. -s

Home folder/shortname rename problem

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for