What are the specific names for the various username formats in Windows?

Question

When windows users are prompted to enter their username, they can usually specify it in a variety of formats:

What are the technical terms for each of these? I'd like to know for future reference in case I need a specific format entered.

A given login either will be part of a domain, and in order to log into an account on the domain you have to specify the domain/network or will simply be a local user account to that specific device. There are no other types of Windows accounts besides a domain account and a local account. 2 of your examples are domain account one is a local account. — Ramhound, Aug 14 '13 at 18:26
Why the down vote? Is this not a legitimate question? I checked for duplicates prior to asking. — Mike B, Aug 14 '13 at 19:05

score 6 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 14 '13 at 18:29

The info you seek is available from MS here: User Name Formats.

There are actually only two types of user names, "User Principal Name" and "Down-Level Logon Name"

User Principal Name:

User principal name (UPN) format is used to specify an Internet-style name, such as [email protected].

Down-Level Logon Name:

The down-level logon name format is used to specify a domain and a user account in that domain, for example, DOMAIN\UserName.

The one where you don't enter a domain name is just using one of these, but it's appending the default domain (or the computer) name for you.

1 Answers1