How do I change "short name" in system preferences-> Accts?

Basicallly, you don't.

There is an Apple KB article on this which, in brief, tells you to create a new account then delete the old one. The short name is a directory in the Users folder and you can view this via Terminal.

As a suggestion, I have an Admin account but work in a basic user's account for my day to day operations. This does not suit some people, and requires frequent use of password and admin Username, but some people regard this as more secure.

Make a new account, delete or keep the old one, and (if you wish) make one or other the admin account.

Basically, you're wrong.

See Mac OS X: How to change user short name or home directory name which provides the proper steps to do this. It's not as easy as 1-2-3, but it does indeed work and is supported.

You might want to check out this script for changing the short name:

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/16620

The latest version is supposedly compatible with Tiger. I haven't used it but I used a previous version on 10.3.x and it worked quite well.

It requires some knowledge of Terminal and I'd suggest reading the documentation carefully.

Steve

Have you tried this process yourself? I am considering doing it and I just want to know whether it definately works ok first, as I have read that it is an incomplete process e.g. http://homepage.mac.com/frakes/MOSXPT/content/shortusername.html

I'm not sure who to trust really, the link I supplied (as you'll see) doesn't look that professional, so if I could hear from someone who's done it that would help. Sorry to ask a few months on by the way, I just did a search and this thread came up.

Thanks!

CharityJF,

The link you posted is to the same script that my MacUpdate link refers to (in my 12/27 post above).

Like I said above I have not used the script in Tiger but it worked very well Panther. The website may not be particularly fancy, but one of the authors of the script is also the author of "Mac OS X Power Tools" in case that helps quell your anxiety.

Steve

I take back what I said about the website, I think when I clicked on your link it came up without any graphics at all and in an odd text, so it looked really dodgy... but when I navigated to it via another route, I saw that it looked better. I wish I could edit my post, but it was too late.

I'm going to try out the software soon. Just a quick question; do you know if it's ok to use capitals in a short name? There's an Apple support article that says don't use capitals or spaces, but my current user name actually is all capitals and it works ok (I just don't like it.) I just want my user name to be my first name i.e. rachel, but I want to use a capital at the start. I know, I know, I'm a weirdo. Sorry 🙂 So do you know if capitals are ok?

Hmm... I had never heard that you were not supposed to use capitals in the short name... but I think I found the support article you're referring to.

I don't think I've ever set up an account with capitals in the short name, and I'm not sure why it would cause a problem. But based on the support article I guess you might want to avoid using them.

Maybe someone else knows more details or can point out where you might run into problems with capital letters in your short name.

Steve

According to http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106824, use only lowercase letters. Why? Ask Apple.

Thanks for your help everyone, I have now used ChangeShortName and loved it, see post here for more info about it: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=277128

Thanks for the feedback. Good computing.