Copy (clone) a user account

yes, that will work and is safe provided you enter the terminal command correctly. if you haven't created the new account yet there is another way to do it but if the new account is already there this method is as good as any.

pick a short user name for your new account. then run the following terminal commands

sudo mkdir /users/newshortname

sudo ditto ~ /users/newshortname

You'll have to enter your admin password (which you won't see) after the first command. that's normal. This will copy your current home directory to /users/newshortname. Then go to system preferences->accounts and create a new account with the short name newshortname. You'll get a popup saying that a home directory by that name already exists and asking if you want to use it. say yes.

I want to see if you can help me. I have been searching high and low for an answer. I have a uswer account and apple compressor wont run properly. After there installs there are files missing per a white paper. Anyway, apple support told me to create another account and log into it and see if compressor is running. It works fine. Apple also told me to migrate everything over to the new account I created, but said they couldnt' tell me how since I was getting support for compressor/FCP studio. I have 10.4.11 and want to transfer all my preference and everything under my current user account to the new account I called admin for short. Can the terminal commands you gave this guy do that for me? If I can transfer everything, I would like to dump the old account, so I just have one. Let me know if you have any tricks.