Mac OS X Snow Leopard: The Missing Manual (Missing Manuals)

12.4. Editing Accounts

Administrators have all the fun. In Tiger, for the first time, non-administrators are permitted to change their startup pictures and passwords. (Just open System Preferences, click Accounts, and click your own account, which appears at the top of the list. Now you can change your name or password.) If you're an administrator, though, you can change your own account in any way you like. (Well, almost any settings: Administrators can change an account's name ”but even they can't change an account's short name once the account has been created.)

If you're a Standard or Managed account holder and you want to make changes (beyond your picture and password), you're out of luck. You'll have to ask an admin to log in, make the changes you want made to your account, and then turn the computer back over to you.

12.4.1. Deleting Accounts

Hey, it happens: Somebody graduates, somebody gets fired , somebody dumps you. Sooner or later, you may need to delete an account from your Mac.

When that time comes, click the account name in the Accounts list and then click the minus-sign button beneath the list. Tiger asks what to do with all of the dearly departed's files and settings:

• Delete Immediately . This button offers the "Hasta la vista, baby" approach. The account and all of its files and settings are vaporized forever, on the spot.

• OK . This button presents the "I'll be back" approach. Mac OS X preserves the dearly departed's folders on the Mac, in a tidy digital envelope that won't clutter your hard drive, and can be reopened in case of emergency.

In the Users Deleted Users folder, you find a disk image file (.dmg) like the ones described on Section 5.10.2. If you double-click it, a new, virtual disk icon named for the deleted account appears on your desktop. You can open folders and root through the stuff in this "disk," just as if it were a living, working Home folder.

If fate ever brings that person back into your life, you can use this disk image to reinstate the deleted person's account. Start by creating a brand-new account. Then copy the contents of the folders in the mounted disk image (Documents, Pictures, Desktop, and so on) into the corresponding folders of the new Home folder.