Changed my account name and everything is back to factory conditions

[MacMan210]

Hello all!

I saw my Account name had my last name in it, so I changed it to just "Nick".

But, when I did this, everything went back to factory settings. My background changed, Safari is back to default, lost all my bookmarks. My dock is still the same though. I use a program called SchoolHouse for school and all my assignments and notes are gone! I looked in my pictures folder, and every single picture I had was gone. I look in movies, everything is still there. I looked in music, everything is in tack.

I looked at the hard drive space left and there is 44gb left, exact amount before i changed my account name. So, all my pictures and school stuff is on my HDD somewhere. How can I get everything back to normal? I changed the account name back to "Nick [last name]" and no changes.

Please help!

 

[EricNau]

Yes, NEVER change the name of your home folder. Upon a restart, OS X creates a new home folder, thinking the other is missing.

Don't panic, none of your information will be lost, but you need to get the system to recognize the old folder again.

Follow these instructions: Return to default desktop, apparent "loss" of home directory

 

[CanadaRAM]

Don't change the name of User folders (or for that matter, any other folder that OSX automatically generates : System, Library, Applications, Users, any hidden folders, or any of the folders within these.)

You will notice in your Users folder you now have 2 folders: "'Nick" and "nicklastname" The one named "nicklastname" was automatically generated when your OS could not find a User folder that corresponded with your login name. All of your data is still in the one you renamed "Nick".

What you need to do is to rename "Nick" carefuly back to the original name. In order to do that you have to rename the new, empty "nicklastname".

Those are the basics. I am going to Search the forums for some more detailed intructions. (as you should have done...) because this has been covered maybe 100 times already.


dit: OK, we now have an MR Guide on this

 

[MacMan210]

Thanks for the help! I searched on Apple before posting here but had no luck. I will never change that name again! I was so scared. Thanks again!