In this article you will find the steps to Change User Name in Windows 10, both in case you are using a Local User Account or Microsoft Account (Microsoft Email ID) to login to your computer.
Change User Name in Windows 10
After Installing Windows 10 or setting up computer, you can either create a Local User Account or create a Microsoft Account (Your Email) to login to your computer.
While creating a Local User Account, you will be asked to provide a “User Name” and this Name will be displayed on the Welcome and Login screens.
In the case of Microsoft Account, the User Name is taken from your online profile. In most cases, the “First Name” will become the Login Name and “Full Name” along with Email Address will be displayed on the Welcome and Login screens.
In case you use your computer at a public place, you may not like the idea of your Name and Email Address being displayed.
Luckily, it is easy to change User Name in Windows 10, whether you are using a Local User Account or a Microsoft Account to login to your computer.
1. Change Local User Name in Windows 10
In the case of a Local User Account, you can follow the steps below to change your User Name in Windows 10.
1. Right-click on Start button and click on Run.
2. In the Run Command Window, type control panel and click on OK.
3. On the Control Panel screen, make sure you are in “Category” view and click on User Accounts.
4. Next, click on Change your account name link.
5. On the next screen, type your New User Account Name and click on Change Name button.
The next time you login to your computer, you will see your New User Name.
2. Change Microsoft User Account Name in Windows 10
In case of Microsoft Account, the User Name is pulled from your online profile and you can either change this by going to account.microsoft.com or by following the steps below.
1. Click on the Start button and then click on Settings.
2. On the Setting screen, click on Accounts.
3. On the Accounts screen, click on Email and Accounts > Manage my Microsoft Account link.
This will open the web browser on your computer and load your Microsoft Account Profile.
4. Navigate to the Accounts Page and click on Edit Name option, located next to your Name (See image below).
5. On the next screen, you will be able to change your First Name and Last Name and click on Save.
How To Change User File Name Windows 10 Computer
6. Restart your computer to see if the changes that you have made have synced back to your computer.
The next time you login to your computer using Microsoft Account, you should be able to see your New Name.
How To Change User File Name Windows 10 Home Edition
If you do not see the change, you may have to wait for a few hours for the changes to sync to your computer.
Also, you need to be aware that changes to your First and Last Name will also be reflected in your online ID and your Microsoft Email Account.
Sick of a filename or folder name in Windows 10? Then change it. Just right-click the offending icon and choose Rename from the menu that pops up. Windows highlights the file’s old name, which disappears as you begin typing the new one. Press Enter or click the desktop when you’re through, and you’re off.
Or you can click the filename or folder name to select it, wait a second, and click the name again to change it. Some people click the name and press F2; Windows automatically lets you rename the file or folder.
After users upgraded to Windows 10, some of them have noticed that the username being displayed, when they are signed in using a Microsoft Account is not what they wanted it to be. In some cases, the last name had got truncated whereas in other cases the email Id was being displayed. Today, we will see how you can change the displayed profile username of your Account in Windows 10.
UPDATE: Things have changed in recent versions of Windows 10, and so this post has been modified/updated.
Change Account username in Windows 10
1] Via Control Panel
Open Control Panel > All Control Panel Items > User Accounts.
Select Change your account name to open the following panel.
In the designated box, write the new name of your choice and click on Change Name.
Your account name will change, and it will now appear in the login screen, Start Menu, etc.
2] Via Settings
In earlier versions of Windows 10, if you are logged into your Microsoft Account, you can do the following.
Open Start Menu and click on Settings. Once the Settings app opens, click on Accounts and then on Your account.
Here, you will see a Manage my Microsoft account link in blue. Click on it to visit your Microsoft account homepage at account.microsoft.com. You may be asked to log in again.
Here on the left side, under Hello, you will see an Edit name link against your name.
Click on it, and on the page which opens, write the name you want to be displayed and click on Save. This is the same name which will be used when you send emails using this email ID.
When you restart your computer, you will see that the account username being displayed has been changed.
You will see the name changed while signing in at the login screen, on your Start Menu, in the Settings app, Control Panel, and all other places.
These are safe methods and will not affect your user files & folders.
Also read: How to change User Account Name in Windows using netplwiz or Registry.
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by Martin Brinkmann on March 28, 2011 in Tutorials, Windows - Last Update: April 10, 2015 - 81 comments
Changing a user's account name in Windows is a straightforward, easy to achieve task. The problem that many users experience after changing the name is that the name of the profile folder is not changed during the process. Say you have a user account Martin and a user profile folder under c:usersMartin. If you change the account name from Martin to Bob, you will see Bob during login. The user folder under c:users is however still named Martin and not Bob.
Windows 10 How To Change User File Path Name
So what can you do if you want to change both the account user name and the folder name of the user profile?
Here is a step by step guide on how to change a user's name and profile folder name under Windows 7. Please note that the old user name will still be used by some Windows Tools, permissions come to mind.
It is recommended to create a backup or at least a system restore point before you start the process, as it requires some basic Registry hacking.
You can use a program like System Restore Manager to create a new system restore point, or one of the backup software programs in our overview for the backup.
You will also lose your current theme which you should backup as well if you want to continue using it.
New Admin account
You need to create a new administrator account to execute all the commands. You cannot use the account that you want to change the user name for. If you only have one account you need to create on first that you can delete again after you have made all the changes. If you have a secondary standard account you can temporarily promote the account to administrator for the process.
Click on Start, then Control Panel. Select Add or Remove user accounts from the options and click the Create a new account link. Name the account and switch to Administrator before you click on Create Account.
Renaming the user account
While we are at it; You can now change the visible user name of the user account that you want to change the name for. Click the Change your account name link in the user account view if you are logged into the account you want to change the name for.
If not click on manage another account, select it from the list and then pick the Change the account name option.
You can now log out of the current account. We have created a second administrator account and changed the visual name of the user account. Log into the admin account that you have just created or promoted afterwards.
Renaming the user folder
Open Windows Explorer or another file browser and open the users folder that you want to rename on the main drive. The folder is usually located under c:users. Locate the folder of the profile that you want to rename, right-click it and select Rename from the options. Enter the new name and press enter after you are finished. You may see an UAC prompt that you need to accept.
The user folder has been renamed, but you need to edit the Registry setting as well as the old folder path is still stored in the Registry. You would get profile not found errors if you would now try to log into the old user account.
Editing the Registry
Open the Windows Registry editor with the shortcut Windows-r, then regedit and the enter key.
Navigate to the following Registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersionProfileList
You find several S-1-5-xx folders in there. You need to click on each folder until you find the the ProfileImagePath folder with the data set to the profile path of the old username, e.g. c:UsersMartin.
You may want to use the search (by pressing f3) if you find many Registry sub folders there.
Double-click the ProfileImagePath name and enter the path to the new user folder into the form, e.g. c:UsersBob
You can now log out of the admin account and log in to the original user account. You will notice that the account name is now displaying the new name. Once logged in you will also notice that the folder under Users is now showing the new folder name that you have selected.
And that's basically how you change both the account user name and the user folder on Windows 7.
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Windows 10 stores all user preferences and settings in a user profile. The user profile is a folder located in C:Users. It includes all account settings like the selected desktop background, screen saver, File Explorer options and many others. If you need to rename this folder after creating the user profile, here is how it can be done.
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A user profile is a set of files and folders to store all personal preferences, app settings, documents and other data. Every user account has an associated user profile. Usually, it is stored in the folder C:UsersUsername and includes a number of subfolders like Desktop, Documents, Downloads, etc along with hidden folders like AppData which store the settings for various Windows features and installed apps. The main purpose of the user profile is to create a personalized environment with individual options tailored to the end user.
To rename your user account folder under C:Users, you need to find your user account's security identifier (SID). There is a special console command which you can use to obtain information about user accounts in Windows 10. It will allow you to find the SID, and plenty of other information. It is covered in detail in this article:
In short, run the following command:
Here is the sample output:
Note the SID value for your account.
You cannot rename the current user profile which you are signed in with. You need to use another user account with administrative privileges. If you don't have another administrative account, you have to create one before proceeding. Then, sign out from the user account whose profile folder you need to rename and sign-in with the other administrative account.
To rename the user profile folder in Windows 10, do the following.
This trick should work for all previous versions of Microsoft Windows.
You are done!
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