"Change User Name" Not Appearing as Option in Windows 10 User Setting

If you only have one user on a Windows 10 PC for some unknown reason the option to change the user name does not appear in the new Settings App !!

The good news is you can still do it through the old reliable Control Panel

Press Windows + X Keys together and select Control Panel from the resulting menu

Click User Accounts - Change your account name

Change your account name and log out for the changes to take effect

One thing to note, there is another bug in Windows 10, when you change your User Name, the one thing that will not change is the name on the folder of your user files, for some unknown reason that does not and cannot be changed . . .

Thanks!  Unfortunately, from your insight, it doesn't solve my biggest problem.  I have hundreds of worksheets that are linked to each other which is why I need to have the folder structure identical on both PCs.  But from what you say, I will need to create a new user account with the same name as my other computer.  I'm going to need to update all of my preferred Windows settings in the new account and probably reinstall a bunch of programs that are only accessible on my current account.

Why is Microsoft so clueless when it comes to things like this??? I would expect their software engineers to be better than this.

For what it's worth, my user name is wrong on the second PC because Windows 10 arbitrarily created a user name from the first few letters of my Microsoft user ID.  It would have been nice, had a box popped up at that time saying "We're about to create a user ID that's nothing like the ones you've used on your prior PCs which will create hours of work if you have linked files."

Thanks for your help.

OK, you must have used absolute referencing instead of relative referencing, Click HERE for a free utility called IceTeaReplacer that might just solve your Issue.

It can be used to replace the referencing you have used in all the Excel files at once by a batch find & replace on all the excel files

So for example you can search for C:\Users\OldUserName and replace it with C:\Users\NewUserName

It will just replace that part of the link reference and all your links into sub-folders of that new user folder should then work . . .

Thanks!

Do you have a URL on how to link worksheets so they can find the source file when the folder structure has changed?

OK, so what you need to do is figure out the common difference in the 2 folder structures - usually it will be the parent folder you copied the folder structure into

Then in the Search For Box, enter the original part of the address that needs changing

In the Replace With Box, enter the new value

In the scenario above:

Search For = C:\Users\Joe Bloggs

Replace with = C:\Users\DaveM

Notice from the scenario above, the rest of the folder structure will be the same . . . it is only up to the name of the user that needs changing

Check the Excel option so the application only loads Excel files

The Search path should be the parent folder that contains all the excel files - when you set this all your Excel files should appear in the list o files

This is so ANNOYING!

First, your instruction to "Press Windows + X Keys together and select Control Panel", certainly launches a menu, but Control Panel is not an option. Wonderful.

No worries, I can manually go to the Control Panel. So, I go to the control panel to follow your next set of instructions "Click User Accounts - Change your account name" only to find that there is no such option:

You know what I think? I think the entire Windows OS is a bug of society. I have zero tolerance for expensive software that doesn't perform and keeps getting incrementally worse from a UI perspective. Great work.

Hi NavyMan,

You're actually in the right direction. You have to get into the User Accounts first to be able to edit or change the username. Follow these steps:

1. Open Control Panel, then click User Accounts.
2. Click the Change account type, then select your local account.
3. In the left pane, you'll see the option Change the account name.
4. Just click it, input a new account name, and click Change Name.

If in case you were trying to change the name of your Microsoft account, please see this link for the steps.

Feel free to let us know if you need further assistance.

Regards.

Vanessa,

advice does not work! Do you really know the system? In my case, I am the administrator of MY PC, and I cannot change a change MY NAME????

Please, explain! I see that I am the admin but the other account is standard, and it is grey so it can not be used! Obviously, MS has taken out the opportunity to change the name. In my case when, start up, my MS email address appears instead of MY FULL REAL NAME!

What happened? I added an alias to my email. Since this operation caused all sorts problems on my PC, I killed it. Since then I have the described issue. So far, my research has not yielded any solution. Can you or anyone else provide a solution, or if there is none whatsoever, then say so.

Hello,

Corrupted profile is one of the possible causes why you're unable to change your username. Can you show us a screenshot of the grey that you're referring to so we can investigate?

Meanwhile, kindly follow these steps:

1. Press Windows key + I keyboard shortcut to open the Settings app.
2. Select Accounts.
3. Click Your email and accounts.
4. Select the Manage my Microsoft account link to open the web browser and load your profile.
5. In the main page click the Edit name link.
6. Modify your credentials and then click Save.
7. Restart your computer.

Do let us know if you have any other concerns.

Here are the screenshots:

The first is from Control Panel > User Accounts

As one can see the Standard is greyed out, and cannot be used.

The second is from PC Settings > Accounts

As one can see my full name has been replaced with my email address.

4. Select the Manage my Microsoft account link to open the web browser and load your profile.

I cannot find this in PC Settings > Accounts > Email and accounts

on that page are only my email addresses and a MS thing. That is al. not further clickable text whatsoever.