Rename short name or switch main user identity

Hi fellow mac users!
I recently have taken over a new G5 at work and want to personalize it to my new user identity. How do I change the existing 'short name' or delete the existing user and make myself the main user?
I'm trying to avoid a whole system re-install since apps and files already exist from the previous user.
Is there a technique that I can try?
thanks in advance.

If you don't need anything from the previous user's home folder, you can simply create a new admin account in SystemPreferences>Accounts and then delete the previous user's account.

Similar Messages

  • Change (rename) short names on existing Users

    Working on the Workgroup Manager with the Apple XServer 10.4.10, and I wonder if there was a code or script to change the “short name” of the users accounts as well as having the new (rename)“short name” stay the default short name. I don’t want the “old” short name to exist on the user account. Is there a process through the terminal program I can make this change?
    Thank you,

    The simple answer is 'no.' But if you're really bent on it, Apple documents the process of creating a new user and integrating the old user's files. http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106824 (updated 2005 so i assume the process has not changed)
    I believe this is targeted at OS X client, as a standalone. The process for an OpenDirectory account may differ.
    Also, there is a utility called ChangeShortName that supposedly automates this process at www.danfrakes.com. I haven't run it and I believe it's intended for standalone OS X clients -- I have no idea what it'd do on a server. I think it's one of those "run at your own risk" things.

  • Changing short name - cannot enable root user??

    Hi I encountered a problem trying to enable the root user in order to follow the steps to change my short name. As I follow the steps into opening Directory Utility and entering my administrator account name and password. Here's where I'm stuck at, there is no "Edit" button asking me to enable the root user. Anyone have any idea what I should do now?

    ow88 wrote:
    Alright I have no idea why I can't edit my own post, but anyways..
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    You can also enable the root in a terminal by entering
    sudo passwd root
    and first entering your regular admin password and then selecting a root password, which should not be the same as your admin password for obvious reasons.
    After that you are on your own, but I suggest first backing the OS up since there might be unexpected consequences from changing the short name. Even if you have nothing saved, you might find that the OS gets hosed for some reason and you have to do a complete reinstall. Using a TM or clone backup makes this a trivial thing to do. Otherwise, it's starting from scratch and updating everything all over again.

  • RENAMED SHORT NAME!!! HELP HELP HELP HELP

    ok. i did a very stupid thing today..
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    simply meaning all my files are in a username 'rob'.
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    Yes, as you have learned this is a big oops!
    Go here for Apple's advice.
    Hope this helps...

  • User's short name greyed and can't be changed

    Hi all I hope I'm in the right area for this post. Here's my problem:
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    Hi
    Firstly you don't have a problem. Its normal behaviour.
    When you first create a User and key in the User's name the first short name gets created at the same time. Prior to clicking Save you can alter it then and only then. As you've already seen you can add further short names as well as editing them. To change the primary short name you delete the user account and create it again exept this time alter the primary short name to suit your needs.
    Tony

  • Why not change the  Macintosh HD to a shorter name.

    I have a friend that picked up a Mac mini with OS X 10.5.8 and one for the first things
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    I recall reading somewhere that it is not a good idea to change the name of the primary
    hard drive from Macintosh HD and I cannot remember why.
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    {Usually the problem occurs when a user changes the Short Name of the
    computer where it affects how it is then seen in a network, and does this
    improperly so the computer can't be networked until this issue is fixed.}
    • Mac OS X: How to change user short name or home directory name:
    http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1428
    • Mac OS X (10.4) Help: What's my computer's name and address?
    http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.4/en/mh632.html
    • How do I change the Owner's Name on my Mac?
    http://www.askdavetaylor.com/howto_change_owners_name_applemac.html
    And if you change the Short Name (account user, etc) then KeyChain
    access and other items may well be a real problem to weed out & fix.
    Note the comments, after the basic info in this thread:
    • Changing Names - Root - Mac Gems - MacWorld:
    http://www.macworld.com/article/41481/2004/12/changeshortname.html
    Or, if a user changes the name of their User Account, improperly, then the
    account won't match the password and other issues will result; unless it
    is fixed or the problem of changing the name incorrectly in the first place
    is avoided; since there is a proper way to change the short name of the
    computer (not that on the icon of the hard disk drive, btw) and a correct
    way, a process, to change the user account name.
    It is not advised to change the User name on an account or that of the
    Computer's name where it is seen on a network. That aside, the name
    change of the computer's Hard Disk Drive, at the icon on the desktop,
    can be avoided by using Dock preferences to Hide the HDD so it will
    not appear on the desktop at all. (Kids in schools change the HDD icon's
    name frequently, when it is available and the computer not set up to
    work under the Parental Controls or lower user account privilege access.)
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    *You can change the Mac HD to any name.* In previous Mac OS (pre-x) versions
    it was also common for users to change the hard drive icon to some other one,
    and if they'd named the computer (a monster name, for example) a new image
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    And, when installing an all-new OS X, you can also change the name of the Mac HD
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    the user's account name(s) since this is where problems begin that are harder to fix.
    If the rules are followed in regard to these two, going into the situation, problems
    are more readily avoided. I just don't change those things, since I'm too busy.
    Good luck & happy computing!
    { edited 2x }

  • Botched short name change attempt has left me with no permissions! Help!

    Early on, my MacBook Pro's hard drive ground to a halt and I had to fork out to get it restored. When it came back, my administrative account was no longer named "Will", but "macbookpro".
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    In my panic, I renamed "William" to "macbookpro" again, meaning that when I log onto my (now completely reset and devoid of preferences) original macbookpro account, I have my permissions mostly back.
    You'd think I would then simply revert to using macbookpro and changing all my preferences, using the Leopard short name change - but "macbookpro" doesn't seem to be able to open ANY applications. At all. For no good reason.
    Short of going through every single file on the hard drive manually and changing the permissions to allow "Will" to read and write, I can't solve this!
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    Please, somebody help!

    If anybody ever has a similar problem, here's how I solved it as best as I could:
    http://www.macchampion.com/arbysoft/Welcome.html BatChmod is a tool for batch editing file permissions.
    It fixed my Applications and Library, and I can now read and write to both folders.
    I dragged solely the contents of Application Support from my backup over the existing Application Support folder within my user's library, and that restored a few, but not all, of my Application Preferences.

  • Really changing the short name.

    Is there an actual method for changing the short name? The methods I've seen involve basically making a new user, just with everything transferred from the old user.
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    So I installed Tiger server (and it updated to 10.4.8) and then went through the setup process. The admin user name I used was my user name (this was the mistake), now I want my name back.
    I went through this with Jaguar server, and my solution then was to reformat and reinstall. I think I'm going to have to do the same again.
    PowerBook 12"   Mac OS X (10.4.8)  

    Hello,
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    - Barrett

  • Right or Wrong? help: user account short name has Capital First Letter

    Hello
    I have the same issue as a post in the Mountain Lion discussion group.  It doesn't seem to be getting an answer.  So I thought I would post it here, being that I do have Snow Leopard.
    The Mountain Lion post is here: https://discussions.apple.com/message/21665861#21665861
    Here is MY question::
    Can anyone answer this?  I have this same thing.  I've had this Mac since 2010, too, I think, at least two years.  I don't remember being asked to use lowercase, nor actually typing in the Capital letter.  I stumbled upon the realization when I was using my Macbook and my user name whille different does use all lowercase.  The Macbook is newer.
    I've been running this Mac with the first letter Capital for the short name with no problems that I know of.  I do have Time Machine backups that I don't really want to lose access to.
    What are the benefits and pitfalls of using the method etresoft explains to change it to all lowercase??  Should I do it just to do it and be in line with Apple's guidelines or should I leave well enough alone??  Which way will cause me MORE problems?  Running with the Capital letter or going through the process of changing it to lowercase??
    What kind of problems will I run into if I change it or don't change it???
    Where "oldshortname" is your old user name and "newshortname" is the user name you want to change it to. Keep in mind that both oldshortname and newshortname must be all lowercase, with no spaces, and only contain letters or numbers.
    And, Padgreen has an excellent point -- how do we do this change process if our Old Shortname is Shortname??  How can we type "shortname" for the "oldshortname" if our shortname is not all lowercase??
    etresoft -- are you around??
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    (the only thing I can even think of as a problem is when I copy files/folders over to my Macbook - it sometimes makes "nobody" the owner of the file/folder and I find out when I try to edit or move the file. I can usually just change the owner and everything is fine.  I don't know if this is related or not.)

    http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1428 states:
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  • Short Name for same user results in different service authorization

    New to Mac Server. Not new to Unix, command line, or sys admin.
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    Her account can only login to iChat using the Initals+Lastname, not First Name.
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    Both users have identical permissions everywhere I can see, both are authorized for iChat.
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    Both users are OD users, not local. I only have an admin account for local access.
    Here is a snippet of the Jabber log:
    jabberd/c2s[40845]: [11] SASL authentication succeeded: mechanism=DIGEST-MD5; authzid=[email protected], TLS negotiated
    jabberd/c2s[40845]: odauth_check_servicemembership: checking user "kaarinas" access for service "chat"
    jabberd/c2s[40845]: odauth_check_servicemembership: mbrcheck_servicemembership returned 0
    jabberd/c2s[40845]: odauth_check_servicemembership: user "kaarinas" is authorized to access service "chat"
    jabberd/c2s[40845]: [11] SASL authentication succeeded: mechanism=DIGEST-MD5; authzid=[email protected], TLS negotiated
    jabberd/c2s[40845]: odauth_check_servicemembership: checking user "kaarina" access for service "chat"
    jabberd/c2s[40845]: odauth_check_servicemembership: mbrcheck_servicemembership returned 0
    jabberd/c2s[40845]: odauth_check_servicemembership: user "kaarina" is not authorized to access service "chat"
    I'm stumped as to why one short name would work, the other not. Looking for hints on how to hunt down and solve the problem.

    This isn't working for me. There was never a local "intern2" account, but I deleted the one in the ldap anyway, made and removed the local intern2 account. I then remade the intern2 account in the ldap directory(which increased the uid), rebooted the server, and the error remains the same as what you report.
    Jun  8 13:36:00 server jabberd/c2s[212]: od_auth_check_service_membership: user "intern2" is not authorized to access service "chat"
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  • If I reinstall Snow Leopard to replace "user" with my own short name in accounts, will I wipe out all upgrades, mail settings, etc. that I have already set?

    After buying a second-hand laptop running Snow Leopard, I made mistake of upgrading software, creating mail accounts, Safari preferences, etc., before noticing that the account name was "user".  I want to replace this Admin account with my own short name, but can't seem to do it without completely reinstalling Snow Leopard.  If I do this, will I lose everything I have done already?  Thanks in advance,
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    Kurt,
    I have a question about that link....it said to change the name of the folder in the way you would change any folder....
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  • Best Practice: changing a user's short name?

    I administer the OS X Servers and user accounts at my school, where typically a few teachers will come back from the summer having gotten married and changed their names.
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    Any and all suggestions would be appreciated -- thanks
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    Hi Blair
    These look like good methods to me and should work. You could consider creating a second short name - something suitable like their first name instead? Enable Mobile Account (PHD) for the affected users and log in using that short name. Their account should now be created locally as well.
    If you have only a handful you could use a spare machine to do it with yourself? More on this later.
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    What you could do is send an email to the affected users outlining the steps they need to take to achieve what you want. Minimal effort with maximum gain.
    When you are happy kill the mobile account option as well as deleting the additional short name. Send another mail advising they use the first short name for logging in. There'll be a little tidying up to do in deleting the locally created home folders but you can do this at your leisure using VNC.
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    Tony

  • Our daughter just got an iPad Mini and I set it up for her, but I originally set it up under my apple id in order to create an apple id for her.  Is there any way for me to switch it to her account as the main user?

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    Hi Maudluna,
    I understand you would like to sign out your Apple ID from an iPad. You can do this easily by following the steps in the article below. I have also linked to an article about Family Sharing which can help you create and manage multiple accounts:
    iOS: Sign in with a different Apple ID in the iTunes Store, App Store, and iBooks Store - Apple Support
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  • Yosemite install has messed up my home folder after fixing user short name.

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    The "Duplication" finished finally and my home folder has now disappeared from the /Users folder in Finder.  If I check in a Terminal, there are now 2 folders - 'tjones' which is set to tjones:wheel and 'tjones copy' which is set to tjones:admin.  As mentioned, neither is visible in Finder.

  • How to change users short name in 10.7 Server version?  Command line possible?

    I just migrated from Snow Leo 10.6 Server to Lion 10.7 server.  All seems ok except for one user (me!).  It seems my short name is different.  It was Goerge Smith but now it is just George.   And All users can login and get mail etc, but not me.
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