Windows 10: Consolidate User Accts & Files Under One User Account

- I asked this question about 2 weeks ago & got a great answer but before I could do the instructions I lost were the answer is. If there is a way to find this answer please let me know.

- I have multiple user names/accounts and files associated with each of these. I want to consolidate all of this under one user name/account. Even though I have shared the user accounts I still can only access files from each account separately. I want only one active user account on my computer - I'm the only user. I also want all of MS Office 365 cloud storage to be under this one account so I can get the 1T of storage in one place.

- I also had a computer crash a while back and only had one account at the time. My user name as shown as the owner of files in properties got truncated to a 5 character name.

EX: Was xxxyyyyyyy. Now: xxxyy.

- The answer I got from this MS Community MVP told me Windows truncates the name to 5 characters but there was a way to fix this too. I know need to fix this too, but I believe it will be taken care of when I consolidate all files under one user name.

- I apologize for having to ask this again. It was such a terrific answer and the responder deserves to be thanked for this - but I can't find my previous response to do that.

- Please help - I need to get this mess straightened out before I do so much more "damage" adding files and folders as I work.

Thanks, ADB

:)

 

User Account; Tried to Switch from Microsoft Acct to Local Acct.....

Hi,



Thank you for posting your query on Microsoft Community.



If you like to login directly to Desktop without using a password, either you may
create a local account
without password or I would suggest you to follow these steps:

• Press Windows key + R on the keyboard.
• Type “netplwiz” without quotes and press Enter.
• Under Users tab, if you have already unchecked the option “Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer” then check it again.
• Now select the User name under Users for this computer
  (make sure you are selecting the correct user account).
• Now uncheck the option “Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer” and click on
  Apply.
• You will get a prompt to enter the password for the User name.
• Type the password, confirm it and click on
  OK.
• Click on OK again.
• Now restart the computer and check if the issue persists.

Note: Please be aware that this option will enable automatic login. So, please use this option only on your personal computer which is not accessed by others.



As per your questions later if I decide to powering Desktop signing into my Microsoft acct?

You can follow the same step and check the option which says Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer
and you can make your local account to Microsoft account.

Using a local acct, will Cortana still allow me to speak to her and get verbal and search answers?

Cortana will not work in locale account only the normal search or web search will work with locale account.

Hope this information helps and let us know the status of the issue we will be glad to help you further.

 

Local Acct user and MS account user - sync them or merge them

If the local account is the one where you have most of your personal data, this is how I would do it:

• Sign in to your Microsoft account
  
• Copy all documents, pictures and other personal data from Microsoft account's user folders to corresponding folders in user Public (contents of MS account Documents folder to Public Documents folder and so on)
• Sign out from Microsoft account

Notice that above steps are only required if Microsoft account user folders contain data you want to keep. If its user folders are empty or do not contain anything worth saving, you can skip the above steps. Continue from below.

• Sign in to the local account
  
• Delete the Microsoft account (Option One in this tutorial)
• Switch your local account to a Microsoft account (tutorial)
• Copy the data backed up from old Microsoft account to Public folders to new Microsoft account in corresponding folders

That's it. Using the Public folders as temporary storage you will have none whatsoever file owner / permission issues later on.

 

Local Acct user and MS account user - sync them or merge them

Thank you. I will give it a try later today and post my results.

Got to it sooner than I thought.
Your method worked perfectly.

Thank you