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AD Name Change

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by chrae

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I recently had somebody get married in the company and her last name changed. For the time being I changed her last name and primary e-mail to what it should be so her name appears correctly on her e-mails and in the address book.

I'm reluctant to change her account name though, fearing that I would need to rebuild her profile on her PC. If she had been loggin in as 'aaa' in the past, and I changed her account name to 'aab' to reflect her new name/username, would that create an new profile on the PC or continue to use the 'aaa' profile through association?

8 replies

by wizard-09

Create a new profile, if you have access to the machine rename the profile to her new name then have her log on this would be your best bet, so rename aaa to aab change the user name on AD have the user log on done :)

Hope that helps.

by pshiflet-24

As long as the user is logging on as a domain account on a domain computer, changing the account's login name should be okay. I have done this before. The only caveat that I have found is that the profile path remains the same. So, if you were to log onto the computer as an administrator and go to the Documents and Settings folder, the account folder will still appear under the old name. But beyond that, everything should function properly.

Please let me know if this helps or you have further questions. Thanks.

[EDIT: after reading the above post, I may have to try it to make sure I am not mis-remembering something]

by wizard-09

Ok, so I have an account on my AD with the name test.1 when test.1 logs onto the computer it creates a profile (PST files, stuff like that) Now if i rename that on AD to test.2 then my settings from test.1 wont load see were i am coming from?

So a rename of the profile would affect the profile

by pshiflet-24

Well, I guess the easiest way to make sure that nothing gets lost would be to copy the user's profile to a roaming profile in AD. Keeping the path the same change the user's login name in AD and have the user login with the new login name. Once the profile is on the local PC, change the type back to local. And just to make sure, right-clicking on the user in AD and selecting "Rename" is not what I am referring to. It is opening the users properties in AD and changing the user logon under the Account tab.

If you do this, please let me know if a new profile is created on the PC (I have a feeling it will be, after thinking it through) or if the user is accessing the same profile folder with their new login name.

by pshiflet-24

I just tested my original suggestion by using a domain user account (locally stored, not a roaming account) on a domain computer and changed the user's logon name through AD user properties/Profile tab and the same profile on the local PC was used without issue.

by churdoo

AD keeps track of users by their SID, not their logon name. You can change a user's logon name any day and the user will continue to get their same profile because their user account SID still matches the SID on the profile.

To use the original example, you have user aaa and you want to change the user logon name to aab. Let's assume that user aaa has a profile path on their local machine of c:\docs and settings\aaa. Renaming and changing the logon name in AD does only that, and it does not go out to domain workstations to rename any local paths. However when the same user now logs into the workstation as aab, their SID still matches that of the original profile, so user aab's local profile path is still c:\docs and settings\aaa.

Hope this clarifies things.

by wizard-09

You were right then, new one for me thanks for the info lease I learned something :-)

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