Show User's "Display Name" instead of "User Logon N

[Christine L]

May I know is it possible to show domain user's "Display Name" instead of "User Logon Name" as owner in print queue? Our company's domain using generic "User Logon Name", i.e. 001, 002, 003 and so on, each "User Logon Name" will have personalized "Display Name", e.g. Mary, John etc., but a problem is when a print job printed by a user is hold in the print queue of a network printer, other users won't know who is it (the owner of the print job may shown as 001, 002 etc.) and so not able to ask that user to remove the print job. Any ideas? Thanks a lot!

[Idontwantspam]

I don't think it's possible to do, but it might be. I'm curious why you don't use something easier to remember/decipher, like first initial last name, i.e. jdoe or msmith, etc?

[cluberti]

Don't double post - it's in the forum rules. Deleting your other duplicate post from the other sections of the boards.

[Christine L]

Sorry...won't happens again...

[nmX.Memnoch]

Using a generic user name for regular users is a bad idea in general. Nothing in Windows is logged using the display name. Everything uses the actual user logon name. With a generic user logon name you've created more work for yourself. Just check any Event Viewer data on any of our servers and you'll see what I mean.

Pretty much the only time you see the Display Name is at the top of the Start Menu (unless that's turned off) and at the Locked Workstation screen.

[Christine L]

Generic "username" may not good, but if using personalized "username", e.g. Mary, John etc., whenever staff change, need to migrate all data from old staff profile to new staff, it's time consumsing especially if there are a lot of applications installed on that PC, as you know, many app support multi users, then, need to resetup those app as well...what do you think?

[nmX.Memnoch]

What I think is that anything used by multiple users should be kept on a file server for access by everyone. That way you don't have to move data around at all.

I have file shares setup by section. My users are instructed to put their important and shared data on their respective shares. Then all you do is add new user(s) to the group(s) that have access to the share.

[cluberti]

A user account should always have something of the user identifiable - numbers are a BAD idea. At least something including a first or last name, or some semblance thereof, is helpful.

Also, when a user leaves or joins the org, assuming you have a file server this shouldn't be a problem. Also, applications that require you to reconfigure them per user should either have the changes automated, or make the changes and save them to the default user profile (either the ntuser.dat file on the machine, or in \\netlogon\default user\ntuser.dat).

[Christine L]

But it's really annoying/time consuming to using custom username for seems just like for please the users as they can have a personalized username

What need to do when there is staff changes

1. Migrate My Documents, Desktop from said username mary to john (As you knows users always save (sometimes critical stuff as well) stuff to these places even you instructed them not to do so already), depends on size, it may takes much times

2. Migrate Outlook pst/n2k file, most likely need to using Outlook's import/export to do the import otherwise may be problematic, it takes much times as well coz normally our users got talking about (n)GB of pst file

3. Shared printers connection....(But actually it can be solved by GPO if I got it setup already...but not yet...)

HATE THESE KIND OF REPEATING JOB, OUR STAFF TURNOVER IS TOO HIGH...........................................................!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[cluberti]

Sounds like you need a vacation

Regardless, you'll have to choose which you want, as you can't have both of your requests. You'll have to live with username choices that are tougher on your but easier on your users, or displaying unusable user names in things like print dialogs. Unless you can implement a more feasible underlying infrastructure for the issues you've mentioned (file server(s), Exchange for mail instead of PSTs, etc), those are your choices.