Delete old users files on a secondhand Mac
I recently purchased a 3 year old secondhand corporate owned MacBook Pro which has a lot of files from the previous user.
Users are as follows:
- admin (admin) from old corporate IT department
- myself (admin)
- old user no. 1
- old user no. 2
Users 3 and 4 must have many files in their respective directories, as only 60GB is available on the drive.
I don't want to do a reinstall unless absolutely necessary, as the unit has some amazing software already installed.
My question is, is it possible to access the old users' accounts so I can delete these files as they are no longer in the country and cannot be reached?
I'm not a power user obviously, but would appreciate any help.
You don't own any of the software on it & will not be able to update it.
You don't even own the OS & will not be able to update that either.
At some point, something will ask for the credentials of the original owner... & you won't know them.
Apple's policy is opposite to that of Microsoft. With Windows the OS & apps belong to the machine & changing the machine's owner is simple. With Apple, everything belongs to the original purchaser - tied to their Apple ID, & they can change machine, taking their purchases with them. They can't, however, give that software away, it is irrevocably tied to the original Apple ID. This includes the OS itself.
Your best course of action is to completely wipe the machine & start over.
As a new owner of a blank second-hand Mac, the new OS you install will now belong to you.
What to do before selling or giving away your Mac should already have been done by the previous owners - & frankly for a company to not wipe its old machines is really unsafe; who knows what sensitive information is still on there... or what spyware, viruses etc...
Start from Step 5 on that page & completely erase & reinstall the OS.
With respect to previous answers that point out that you don't own the OS or the apps on the computer they are (mostly) right. MacOS is free to use with a Mac. But the OS on the Mac you bought was registered under an AppleID owned by the company you bought the Mac from so updating it will be problematic without the AppleID and corresponding password.
You do not own the Apps installed on that Mac. Period. So updating them without resorting to unlawful copies and/or updaters will be impossible.
Actually removing a user profile is about as simple as it gets. Open System Preferences > Users & Groups and click the lock icon to authenticate yourself. Select the account you want to delete and click the "-" button at the bottom of the left column. You will be given a couple of options, to simply delete the profile or create a disk image of that profile. If you need none of the user specific data then just delete the profile. Repeat as necessary.
Personally I would do as previous answers have suggested, reinstall macOS after you wipe the hard drive. You then start with a clean slate that carries none of the cruft left behind by that Mac's previous users.