How to Change Your Windows Username in Windows 11 and 10
July 24, 2026
July 24, 2026
Somebody typed your name wrong during setup. Or you got married. Or the machine came from an employee who left in 2023 and it still greets you with their name every morning. Whatever brought you here, you can change your Windows username in about two minutes.
The confusing part is that Windows stores your identity in three separate places. Changing one of them does nothing to the other two, which is exactly why so many people finish a guide like this and still feel like it did not work.
You update the name on the sign-in screen. Feels done. Then you open File Explorer, glance at the address bar, and there is the old name sitting in your file path like nothing happened.
Direct answer: You can change your Windows username on a local account, press Windows + R, type netplwiz, select your account, click Properties, and enter the new name. For a Microsoft account, you have to change it on the Microsoft account website instead, because the name syncs down from the cloud. Neither method renames the C:\Users\ profile folder, which is a separate and much riskier operation.
This guide covers every method for both account types, explains when the folder rename is worth attempting, and fixes the six reasons the change usually fails to stick.
C:\Users\ folder requires registry edits and can break installed applications.Before you touch anything, work out which name is actually bothering you.
Windows keeps three names for every account, and they are not connected to each other. The one on your sign-in screen is the display name. Underneath it sits the account name, which is what the operating system uses internally for permissions. And then there is the profile folder, the physical directory at C:\Users\something where every one of your files, settings, and application configurations lives.
Most people who search for this want the first one changed. Some want the third. Almost nobody needs the second on its own.
Here is the part that catches out experienced administrators too. The profile folder gets named once, during account creation, from the first five characters of whatever name you typed. It never updates again. Not when you rename the account, not when you change your Microsoft account, not ever.
| Name type | Where you see it | How to change it | Risk level |
|---|---|---|---|
| Display name | Sign-in screen, Start menu, lock screen | netplwiz, Control Panel, or Microsoft account website | None |
| Local account name | Permissions, command line, net user output |
Local Users and Groups, or PowerShell Rename-LocalUser |
Low |
| Profile folder name | File Explorer address bar, C:\Users\ |
Registry edit plus manual folder rename | High. Can break applications |
| Microsoft account name | Every synced device, Outlook, Teams, Xbox | account.microsoft.com only | None, but affects all services |
Three names, three methods. Identify which one you need before you start.
Work out which row you are in. The rest of this guide is organized the same way.
The method that works depends entirely on how your account authenticates. Guessing wrong is the single most common reason people hit a dead end.
Open Settings, then go to Accounts, then Your info. Look directly under your name.
If you see the words “Local account" under your name, everything on this machine is yours to change. No cloud sync, no external dependency. Skip to the next section and pick whichever method you prefer.
If you see an email address instead, your name is stored on Microsoft’s servers, not on your PC. Renaming it locally will either fail silently or get overwritten the next time the machine syncs. You have to change it at the source.
If Settings shows a “Work or school account" or mentions Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory), your name is controlled by whoever runs your organization’s directory. You cannot change it yourself, and you should not try. Open a ticket with your IT team.
Check your account type before you start. It determines which of the four methods below will actually work.
One more thing worth knowing about the machine you are working on. Windows 10 reached end of support on October 14, 2025 (Microsoft). Consumer Extended Security Updates (ESU) keep enrolled version 22H2 devices patched beyond that date, but the program is a bridge to Windows 11, not a permanent arrangement. Every method below works on both operating systems.
Four methods, all of them valid. The first one is fastest and works on every edition of Windows including Home.
netplwiz and press Enter.That is the whole process. The name updates on the sign-in screen and in the Start menu immediately after you sign back in.
Slower, and it only works on local accounts, but some people find it easier to follow.
If the Change your account name link is missing entirely, you are on a Microsoft account. Jump ahead two sections.
This method changes the underlying account name rather than just the display name, which matters if you manage permissions or scripts.
lusrmgr.msc, press Enter.One catch: lusrmgr.msc does not exist on Windows Home editions. If you get an error saying the snap-in cannot be found, that is why. Use netplwiz or PowerShell instead.
For anyone comfortable at a prompt, or anyone who needs to script this across several machines.
Open Windows Terminal as administrator, then run:
Get-LocalUser
Rename-LocalUser -Name "OldName" -NewName "NewName"Get-LocalUser lists every account on the machine so you can confirm the exact spelling before you rename anything (Microsoft Learn, PowerShell LocalAccounts documentation). Note that the older wmic command that appears in most guides written before 2023 is deprecated in Windows 11. Use PowerShell instead.
Renaming accounts one machine at a time is fine for three PCs. It stops being fine at thirty. If you are supporting a distributed team, centralized account management is worth reading about alongside endpoint security best practices, since both problems have the same root cause: identity scattered across devices you cannot physically reach.
CTA: See what centralized desktop management actually costs
Your Microsoft account name is not a Windows setting. It is a cloud profile that Windows displays.
Changing your Microsoft account name changes it everywhere: Outlook, Teams, Xbox, OneDrive, and every device you have ever signed into. That is usually what people want. Occasionally it is not, so pause for a second before you save.
Sync is not instant. Give it a few minutes and a full sign-out cycle. If the old name is still showing after that, restart the machine rather than just signing out, because some cached profile data only refreshes on boot.
The thing this does not change is your login email address. Your name and your sign-in address are separate fields. Changing the display name to “Jennifer Ross" does not turn [email protected] into anything else, and you will still type the old email at the sign-in screen. Changing the email itself is a different process involving account aliases.
Here is where most guides go quiet, or worse, hand you registry instructions with no warning attached.
The profile folder can be renamed. It involves editing the registry, and it can break applications that hardcoded your old path during installation. Adobe products, some development tools, and anything with a license file tied to an absolute path are the usual casualties.
For most people, the honest answer is: leave it alone. The folder name is cosmetic. Nothing except you will ever look at it.
If you still want to proceed, the sequence is:
wmic useraccount get name,SID, or in PowerShell, Get-LocalUser | Select Name,SID, to find your Security Identifier (SID).C:\Users\ to the name you want.HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList, and find the subkey matching your SID.ProfileImagePath and update the path to match the new folder name.The safer alternative most IT teams use: create a new account with the correct name from the start, move the files across, and delete the old profile. It takes longer but nothing breaks.
The “Change your account name" link is greyed out or missing. You are either not an administrator or you are on a Microsoft account. Check Settings, Accounts, Your info to confirm which. If you need administrator rights and do not have them, someone else on the machine does.
Control Panel is nowhere to be found. Press Windows + R, type control, press Enter. Windows 11 has been quietly deprecating Control Panel for years but the Run command still opens it.
The new name shows in some places but not others. Classic sync lag. Sign out fully, then restart. If the Start menu updated but the lock screen did not, a restart almost always resolves it.
File Explorer still shows the old name in the path. Working as designed. That is the profile folder, not the account name. See the previous section.
You get an error message when you click Change Name. Confirm you are running as administrator, install any pending Windows updates, and try again after a restart. Pending updates block a surprising number of account operations.
The name reverts after a reboot. This one points at a Microsoft account overwriting your local change, or an organizational policy pushing the name down from a directory. Check whether the account is managed before you try again.
Everything above assumes you are sitting at the machine, or that you can talk someone through it over the phone.
That assumption breaks the moment your team is distributed. A name change becomes a support ticket, a scheduled call, and twenty minutes of screen sharing with someone who is nervous about the registry.
On a cloud desktop the geography stops mattering. We deploy Windows cloud server environments where account changes happen once, centrally, and every user sees the result at their next sign-in regardless of what device they are holding. The profile folder problem largely evaporates too, because provisioning a fresh desktop with the correct name from the outset takes under 20 minutes rather than an afternoon of imaging.
For teams running BYOD and remote work setups, that difference compounds. The desktop is the managed object, not the laptop, so the laptop can be anything.
We are not suggesting you migrate your infrastructure over a spelling mistake. But if account administration across scattered endpoints is already eating hours you do not have, the pattern is worth examining. Our IT manager solutionspage covers how the day-to-day changes.
CTA: Talk to a cloud expert about centralizing your desktop management
No. Your display name and your sign-in address are separate fields. If you change your Microsoft account name, you will still sign in with the same email address. Changing that requires setting up an account alias instead.
Windows creates the profile folder once when the account is first made and never renames it automatically. It is a deliberate design choice, because applications store settings using that exact path. Renaming it manually requires a registry edit and carries real risk.
Not for a local account. Windows requires administrator privileges for any account modification. A Microsoft account name is different, because you change it on Microsoft’s website rather than on the PC, so local permissions do not apply.
You cannot, at least not yourself. Accounts joined to Microsoft Entra ID or an on-premises domain get their names from the directory. Contact whoever manages your organization’s IT and ask them to update it at the source.
Renaming the account name or display name is safe. Renaming the C:\Users\ profile folder is where applications break, specifically anything that recorded an absolute path during installation.
Usually a few minutes. Sign out of Windows and sign back in to trigger the refresh. If the old name persists after that, restart the machine, because some cached profile data only reloads on boot.
The display name is cosmetic and appears on the sign-in screen and Start menu. The account name is what the operating system uses internally for permissions and command-line operations. netplwiz changes the display name. Rename-LocalUserand Local Users and Groups change the account name.
Yes. Every method in this guide works identically on Windows 10 and Windows 11, with one exception: lusrmgr.msc is unavailable on Home editions of both. Bear in mind that Windows 10 has been out of standard support since October 14, 2025.
Your V2 CloudCare team — real people, on the line.
