The page on the Paratext website about changing a user’s registration name and converting the project implied that an administrator wanting to change their own name can run the Convert Project tool. I’ve found that this doesn’t seem to work (or it requires persistence and ignoring some ominous warnings to continue). Has anyone had experience with this?
The problem is if the administrator runs the Convert Project tool to change their name while still using the old name, the Convert Project tool seems to accept the rule to change the name, but then at the end it says as an observer of the project, they have no permission to change it, so all changes to text have been undone. If they change their registration to the new name before converting the project, the Convert Project tool will refuse to run since the new name has no rights in the existing project. If they attempt to add the new name to the project while still using the old name, Paratext refuses to accept the new name since it doesn’t exist in the registry yet.
So I’ve rewritten the page to suggest the easiest path would be to have an administrator who doesn’t need to change their name do the conversion. If an administrator does indeed need to change their own name, it looks like the process does eventually work. They run the conversion tool before changing their name, and when the warning comes that all changes to the text have been discarded, they can look at the converted project and see if it has changed the names in user permissions and project history. (In my experience testing, it does change the names in user permissions, and some of them in project history, but not all. Or perhaps it doesn’t change the user names in the project notes.
But if the new name is there as an admin in user permissions, they can proceed to change their name in Paratext, then run the conversion tool again to try to catch what name changes did not happen.
The page in question: (specifically the section Rename user and convert project
https://paratext.org/support/registry/change-a-users-registration-name/
