can the account short name be changed

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Level 1

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can the account short name be changed

Hi all,

When I created my administrator account the user short name stayed "user" by mistake, is it possible to change it? It's gray on the Accounts Panel and I cannot edit it in anyway... Do I have to create another account and make it the administrator in order to change this?

1.67 GHz PowerBook G4, Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Posted on Nov 20, 2006 4:31 AM

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Answer 1

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Chris Harwood

Level 4

1,374 points

Nov 20, 2006 4:37 AM in response to cperes

Yes you can - check out

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/23494

this is an app named ChangeShortName.app
DO READ THE INSTRUCTIONS

chris

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Answer 2

Nov 20, 2006 5:02 AM in response to cperes

Do not use this method on OSX 10.3 and earlier, it will make a mess.

IMPORTANT, open NetInfo Manager and enable root account. Log out of the current user and log into root account. Go to the userfolder in Finder and change the name of the folder.

Open NetInfo Manager and look in "users" for the old username. Change the username (you can use CAPITALS here if you want) and the path to the home folder. The path to home folder can even be a partition. When finished, save changes and quit NetInfo Manager.

IMPORTANT! Open System Preferences, Accounts prefpane and make sure your new user is still admin user. If you forget this step you have more problems to solve.

Reboot.

Depending on security, you might want to disable root account when it's all working. If you encounter any parmissions problems, post here. But I have done this procedure routinely and it has always worked no problem.

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Answer 3

cperes Author

Level 1

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Nov 20, 2006 5:20 AM in response to Chris Harwood

Thanks a lot Chris! This app worked perfectly! I have a decent short user name now!

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