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How Do I Get Rid Of Multiplying Profiles?

In Finder—>My MacBook Pro—>Users, I see a list of all the profiles for people who use this MBP. Besides “Guest” and my own profile, I have a profile for my wife, my daughter, and for my grandson. My daughter uses the machine from time to time; my grandson has used it once; my wife has used it a few times. The odd thing: My wife’s name appears 10 times! My profile and those for the daughter and grandson have just one line. My wife has Kate, Kate1, Kate2, Kate3 … , Kate 9. What might cause this behavior? I’ve asked about this in the Apple Community Forums, but I got no replies. I haven’t noticed any problems that might have been caused by this, but I’d like to understand what’s going on.
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Lucas H

Comments: 2 Responses to “How Do I Get Rid Of Multiplying Profiles?”

    8 years ago

    First, let me explain what you are seeing a little bit. When you look in the Users folder, you are seeing the physical storage area for your user's documents and other files. You are not seeing the user accounts, just the "stuff" owned by a user.
    Unless you are a developer or technician, there's really no reason to ever look in your Users folder. Just look in your Home folder folders (Documents, Movies, Music, etc) for things. Looking at the Users folder you will see the home folders for yourself and other users, but you don't have permission to do anything with the other folders. Just trying to explain that a little bit.
    To see what users you have on your Mac, go to System Preferences, Users & Groups. There you will see the real list. If you have Kate, Kate1, Kate2, Kate3 and so on listed there, then you have lots of separate extra users for Kate. If you just see one Kate there, then you just have one user and other other folders are a bit of a mystery. But they aren't multiple users, just some extra folders.
    I've never seen these extra folders before. I don't see anyone online reporting this behavior. It is probably due to some problem when the user account was created or some other hard drive mishap, perhaps not even recently.
    The only way to know for sure is to have an expert take a close look at it. Perhaps at the Genius Bar.

    Lucas H
    8 years ago

    Thanks for the prompt reply, Gary! It's interesting that even you have never seen a situation like this. That may explain why no one replied at the Apple Community forums. I'll try the Genius Bar next, but, like I said, it doesn't cause any perceivable trouble ... just weird.

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