Merging User Accounts.

[JamesAB]

Hi again.

During the fun I have had with W10 recently it was necessary to create multiple user accounts. Two of these were identical appart from the user name. When I had finished with one of the accounts, I deleted it. For some reason I did not do this properly and the account data was not deleted, remaining under C:\.....Users\ (Deleted Account Name).I attempted to manually delete them. Not all would delete. I decided not to bother with those and returned to my Desktop only to find a number of the program icons had dissappeared!

I opened the recycle bin and restored the Desktop file that I had just deleted from the redundant account . Lo and behold the program icons now have reappeared on my Desktop. Whilst this is no big deal, it is a bit confusing in that I only have one UAC on the PC but its content (at least the desktop) is aapparently being influenced by residual data from a deleted UAC.

Can I merge the data from the old account with the one that I am currently cusing and end up with just the one name under c:\.....Users\??

Thanks,

Jim

 

[writhziden]

Hi Jim. What I would suggest is copying the files from your old account to your new account as described in the link I provided in your other thread. Make sure your new account is set to be an administrator account and proceed with the steps outlined below:

1. Log into your old account
2. Right click the Start button
3. Click Control Panel
4. Under User Accounts click on Change account type
5. Click on your new user account and make sure it has Administrator under its description; if not, change the type to an administrator account

...

1. Copy files from the old user profile to the new user profile by using a third profile
2. Log in to your new administrator account
3. Right Click on the Start button
4. Click Control Panel
5. This time, click on User Accounts
6. Click on Remove user accounts
7. Remove the user accounts you do not plan on keeping on your system
8. Restart your computer
9. Manually delete remnants of the old User folders from the C:\Users directory

 

[JamesAB]

It seems that this is more complicated than I thought. Under C:\...Users, There are three accounts or perhaps I should call them profiles. There names are: Default, James and Jim. When I log in to the PC my user name "Jim" is shown but it seems that the profile being used when I sign in is "James." I don't know why this is so but I guess it might be that at one time I changed the name I use on the sign-in page at one stage - don't ask me why, it seemed a good idea at the time!

Most of the sub-folders under "Jim" are empty or contain nothing of consequence..... excepting the "App Data" which contains several Gb of data. I am happy to leave the "Default" folder alone but I would like to get rid of the "Jim." I worry that if I delete the huge "AppData" folder. something horrible might happen, but I am very tempted to do so. First I will change my sign-in name back to James so that it coincides with the "James" profile under Users. Watch this space!

Regards, Jim

 

[JamesAB]

I haven't found out how to change my screen name yet, but It cant be that difficult? I have managed to get rid of the C:\Users\Jim profile without doing any damage. IA curious thing: I have another name under users which only contains "AppData" and is only a 8 kb in size. This is probably from when I was going to create another profile but did not fully proceed with it. I can delete this name and folder but when I restart the PC it is again under "Users," it appears under "Users" again. Most odd as I can't find it anywhere in UAC.

Jim