Accidentally renamed Users folder to Downloads--Please help!

Hello and welcome!

The naming of the users folders is something that W10 does and it is incredibly difficult to change. It really doesn't matter what the folder name is. You can just live with it or try to go back to where you were with a system restore to a point before you made the change (of course this requires that you have system restore points activated).

System Restore Windows 10

Thank you philc43! Yes, I suppose it wouldn't matter too much and I could live with it; but it's just annoying to me because I can't change it back, haha. And that's another thing, I didn't turn on system restore before I made the error, stupid me.

But I guess at this point I don't really have a choice so I will just have to learn to make-do with the mistake.

Hello mmmson,

If it really annoys you the following might be worth trying if you want to get back to a sensible name:

Create a new local account with the user name you want, make it an administrator account, and sign in to it. This way the "C:\Users\(user-name)" profile folder will have the name you want.

User Account - Add in Windows 10

Afterwards, you can delete your old account after copying what you want to the new local account. Rather a pain to do I know!

User Account - Delete in Windows 10

@philc43 Thank you once again for your helpful input! Yes I've definitely given that route some thought and I believe that I will do just that! Now is there any way to copy over the system settings of my original user account to the new user account? Or am I stuck having to re-do all the settings manually?

Well, having system settings automatically apply to your account is one of the features that a Microsoft account login provides since it stores your settings in the cloud (I believe it uses OneDrive) and is activated by the Sync your settings options. Not sure just how many of your settings it takes care of but it includes themes, IE settings, passwords, language, and ease of use.

If you wanted to do this you would have to do the following:

Convert your current account (with the "Downloads" user name) to a Microsoft account - https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/5...dows-10-a.html - make sure you go into Settings -> Accounts and turn on Sync settings, activating all the settings you want saved. Leave it for a while so that these settings are backed up to the cloud.

Then do the procedure I outlined earlier but make sure your new account is a local one or you will not get the folder name you want. Also make sure it has administrator status.

Then afterwards you can convert your new account back to a Microsoft account using the procedure above and the sign in details you used before and it should after a short time sync your settings back to the ones you had originally.

I know this sounds complicated and time consuming but I do not know of any other way to reliably change the folder name in your C:\Users folder. You will still have to copy over your personal folders and files from the old account to the new one.

Let me know how you get on if you decide to do this.

...Phil

Thank you again Phil! I definitely will go about this and I'll let you know how things go after the whole process is over. I'm currently at work and I can't wait to get home to remedy my new laptop, haha.

Best,
Emerson

So I was able to create a new user account and after moving over a few files, I ended up deleting my old user name which makes everything back to the way it should. The whole process took about 45 mins from start to finish, but at least my mind is at peace from that ridiculous error I made in merging those two folders together. Thanks again @philc43 for your help!