As administrator, how can I access the files and folders of another administrator?

As administrator, how can I access the files and folders of another administrator?


On our Mac there was one administrator, containing all the data, photo's, movies etc from the family. At a certain point one person left the family. On that moment, we made a second administrator (for myself) but the first administrator changed his password and left, so I cannot access the data anymore. All the original files and folders are part of the first administrator's account and are blocked for me. As I am administrator, how can I change the access rights of the first administrator? How can I get back my files??


Thanks for your help!

lvhoutte

iMac 27″

Posted on Nov 29, 2025 12:22 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Nov 29, 2025 7:38 PM

You can change the macOS user account password for any other macOS user in the "User & Groups" System Settings.


With any admin user account you can change the password of any other user account.....in Step #2 in the following Apple article, you can select any user if you are an admin user:

Change the login password on Mac - Apple Support


3 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Nov 29, 2025 7:38 PM in response to lvhoutte

You can change the macOS user account password for any other macOS user in the "User & Groups" System Settings.


With any admin user account you can change the password of any other user account.....in Step #2 in the following Apple article, you can select any user if you are an admin user:

Change the login password on Mac - Apple Support


Nov 29, 2025 1:07 PM in response to lvhoutte

If the person involved is the Family Sharing group organizer, the Family Sharing group will need to re-form.


Leave or remove a member from a Family Sharing group on iPhone - Apple Support


What happens when sharing is ended is included here:


How to leave or remove a member from a Family Sharing group - Apple Support


The Family Sharing iCloud-related dats is entirely independent of the administrators configured on macOS. If there is data in another macOS login, an Admin user can usually authenticate and access that data, but Family Sharing is built on iCloud and not macOS local storage and doesn’t use this.


As administrator, how can I access the files and folders of another administrator?

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