Windows 10 clean install wants to call my user folder donan instead of Don

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I just did a clean install on my ~2016 Dell Inspiron desktop, replacing the original hard drive with a 2TB SSD. The computer had become very slow and the 1TB drive was chronically low on free space. So, all is fine and good except that during setup of my account on the new install, instead of insisting on using a local account as I have done in the past, I figured I would give in and drink the MS Kool-Aid and use my Microsoft account username which is my email address, as my login name. I have the old drive in an external USB drive dock and I’ve copied a lot of data files over. One of my checklist items for setting up the new install is to run Outlook and manually set it up to access my email account via IMAP, as it was on the old PC and then close Outlook. Then I planned to rename the newly-created Outlook .ost file in C:\users\[username]\appdata\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\ with “_old” at the end then copy the .ost file from the same folder on the old drive to that folder. But I noticed that while my user folder on the old install was “Don” (without the quotes) the username on the new install is “donan” (without the quotes). I think the installer used part of my email alias to name the user folder. Is it possible to change this to “Don” without messing things up?

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When you use a Microsoft account, WIndow uses the first five characters of the email address as the user folder name. Unfortunately, there is no supported way to change the user folder name.

--Joe

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There is a method that has worked fine for many people, which just requires changing the profile path in the registry as well as renaming the folder:

How to Change the Name of a User Profile Folder in Windows 10

(which explains how to perform the “workaround” provided by Microsoft:
Renaming a user account doesn’t automatically change the profile path.)

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The procedure given above by b worked…mostly. Please see attachment “Tenforums Change OneDrive Folder Location”. I do not see the “Change Location” link in OneDrive settings. Looking with Windows Explorer, the OneDrive folder is still located at c:\users\donan and not c:\users\Don. BTW, the Tenforums procedure has you make a symbolic link to redirect from donan to Don so maybe it is not a problem because any apps or registry keys that point at c:\users\donan will be redirected to c:\users\Don. I thought about dragging OneDrive from donan to Don (as depicted in “Drag OneDrive from donan to Don”, but I’m not sure if that will update the OneDrive pointer. I’m beginning to think it might have been better to just live with donan but now that I’ve made the change, and everything seems to be working I suppose I can leave it the way it is now.

Don

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The way I work around this is to create a local account first (obviously with Home editions you’ll need to jump through hoops to do this) and then convert it to a Microsoft account later from Settings.

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Snoopdon

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