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new user house

I just bought a used imac and while setting it up, I must have missed something. In my finder under “places”, the little house is labeled “newuser”. How can I rename that icon to my user name?

— Tom Kennedy

Comments: 4 Responses to “new user house”

    14 years ago

    There is a long user name (i.e. John Doe) and a short user name (i.e. jdoe). Which is it? You can change you long user name in the Accounts prefs at any time. But you cannot change the short user name. It is because all of the folders and lots of files inherit that name. All you can do is to create a new user account with the name that you want. Then transfer everything manually to that new account. Doing that sooner rather than later is better.

      Tom Kennedy
      14 years ago

      Unfortunately I think it is the short name. I would like to make it right but I don't want to get too carried away. How do I create a new user and what need to be transferred? Do I drag every folder over? Under "Devices" it is labeled "Dads iMac" but when I am home sharing itunes from another computer I see "newuser". It wouldn't kill me to leave it either. Let me know what you think and thanks for your time. Great website and podcasts.

        14 years ago

        Go to System Prefs, Accounts and create a new account there. If you just started, there may not be much to transfer. But if you have been going for a while: documents, music, photos, videos, email, etc. Basically, everything in the various folders in your bad "newuser" user folder.

    Michael
    14 years ago

    You could try connection an external hard drive and back up all your data. And do a fresh install of the OS X and this time get it right:) and just transfer all your data over to your "new" user name. That may be easier and should take care of any permission problems that "may" occur.

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