Windows allows you to change your "display name" that appears on the login screen and a few other areas after the fact, but it does not provide a way to rename your profile folder. I suspect the reason for that is that many applications will have configuration files and registry entries that point to your current path. Technically they all should be pointing to locations within your profile folder by using a relative path that incorporates the Windows variable for this purpose, such as "%Userprofile%\Desktop" rather than "C:\Users\Mike\Desktop", but of course not every application follows best practices. As a result, if you were to rename that folder, you'd likely find that a lot of things would break. In fact, Windows would probably end up creating a brand new profile folder for you and then have no link between your user account and your original, renamed folder where all of your data was.
The only way to do this "properly" would be to delete your user profile folder and have Windows recreate it when you next log in, at which point Windows will name that folder based on your current display name -- but of course that requires backing up anything you don't want to lose beforehand and can still be a hassle because settings that live in the registry won't have been backed up.
JOcean
9 Legend
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12.6K Posts
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May 26th, 2019 11:00
This might help.
https://superuser.com/questions/890812/how-to-rename-the-user-folder-in-windows-10
jphughan
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14K Posts
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May 26th, 2019 16:00
Windows allows you to change your "display name" that appears on the login screen and a few other areas after the fact, but it does not provide a way to rename your profile folder. I suspect the reason for that is that many applications will have configuration files and registry entries that point to your current path. Technically they all should be pointing to locations within your profile folder by using a relative path that incorporates the Windows variable for this purpose, such as "%Userprofile%\Desktop" rather than "C:\Users\Mike\Desktop", but of course not every application follows best practices. As a result, if you were to rename that folder, you'd likely find that a lot of things would break. In fact, Windows would probably end up creating a brand new profile folder for you and then have no link between your user account and your original, renamed folder where all of your data was.
The only way to do this "properly" would be to delete your user profile folder and have Windows recreate it when you next log in, at which point Windows will name that folder based on your current display name -- but of course that requires backing up anything you don't want to lose beforehand and can still be a hassle because settings that live in the registry won't have been backed up.