My MacBook Pro’s been collecting dust since I purchased an iPad 2, so I decided to pass it along to my folks. Ideally, I’d like to leave all the software that’s on it for them to use, but would it be better to reformat the hard drive and reinstall everything from square one? Or is there a simpler option?
The simplest way to approach this is to create a new administrator account specifically for your parents and then delete yours. First, make sure that all of your data is backed up either on an external drive or in the cloud somewhere. Then, go to System Preferences > Users & Groups and create an account for your parents. Log out of that account and then back into the one you just created, and go to the same preferences pane to delete yours. Be sure to select “Delete the home folder” and “Erase home folder securely” so that all files associated with your user name will be removed completely.
Securely erasing the home folder will ensure that none of the documents stay behind.
We should note that if you didn’t store your files in the home folder by default, you’ll have to manually delete those. Otherwise, your parents will still have access to them.
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