How to Merge Facebook Accounts - While Facebook does not allow users to auto-merge all friends, photos, status updates, check-ins or other information, you can manually merge parts of your FB accounts. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to migrate or re-create all of your data on FB.
As a first step, download your data. This procedure can take a while and the archive will serve as your small backup, should you decide to deactivate or delete your Facebook account. It won’t be of great help in restoring any data, though.
Briefly, go to your General Account Settings and click Download a copy of your Facebook data at the bottom.
This will lead you to a page where you can download your information and get a copy of what you have shared on Facebook.
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Now do start your archive on this first page. In addition find where it says You can also download anexpanded archive… and click the respective link. This will guide you to the Expanded Archive download page where you will be asked to re-enter your password.
Now here is where you will need patience. Depending on how big your main and your expanded archive are and how many other archives are in the queue, this can take some time. And with that I mean a couple of hours.
Note that you must download both archives, to receive a full backup of your account!
Once your archive is available for download, this is what the page will look like.
Although your own photos are supposed to be included in the archive, you should download your Facebook Photos separately. Not only is this procedure another backup, it is also a lot faster and might provide you with more options.
As mentioned above, you won’t be able to restore or migrate all of your data and that includes your friends. You need to manually add friends to your new account. Unfortunately, it is not possible export your Facebook friends to a third party account and then re-import them to a new Facebook account.
However, you can import contacts from third party accounts such as Skype or Gmail. So if you have contact details of most of your friends on accounts outside of Facebook, you can take a small shortcut. Go to your new Facebook account and import contacts from any supported third party account (CSV files are also supported) via the Find Friends page.
While you can export your Facebook contacts to Yahoo! Mail, it is not be possible to re-import them to Facebook. And contacts imported from Facebook will certainly not be included in a Yahoo! CSV file.
How to Bulk Download Facebook Data
As a first step, download your data. This procedure can take a while and the archive will serve as your small backup, should you decide to deactivate or delete your Facebook account. It won’t be of great help in restoring any data, though.
Briefly, go to your General Account Settings and click Download a copy of your Facebook data at the bottom.
This will lead you to a page where you can download your information and get a copy of what you have shared on Facebook.
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Now do start your archive on this first page. In addition find where it says You can also download anexpanded archive… and click the respective link. This will guide you to the Expanded Archive download page where you will be asked to re-enter your password.
Now here is where you will need patience. Depending on how big your main and your expanded archive are and how many other archives are in the queue, this can take some time. And with that I mean a couple of hours.
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Note that you must download both archives, to receive a full backup of your account!
Once your archive is available for download, this is what the page will look like.
Although your own photos are supposed to be included in the archive, you should download your Facebook Photos separately. Not only is this procedure another backup, it is also a lot faster and might provide you with more options.
Restore Friends
As mentioned above, you won’t be able to restore or migrate all of your data and that includes your friends. You need to manually add friends to your new account. Unfortunately, it is not possible export your Facebook friends to a third party account and then re-import them to a new Facebook account.
However, you can import contacts from third party accounts such as Skype or Gmail. So if you have contact details of most of your friends on accounts outside of Facebook, you can take a small shortcut. Go to your new Facebook account and import contacts from any supported third party account (CSV files are also supported) via the Find Friends page.
While you can export your Facebook contacts to Yahoo! Mail, it is not be possible to re-import them to Facebook. And contacts imported from Facebook will certainly not be included in a Yahoo! CSV file.
Note that only contact information of friends who have agreed to have their email address included in information downloads can be imported into your Yahoo! account.
Here comes the big letdown. There is no way to upload or otherwise import your archive to restore or transfer data from your old Facebook account to your new one. Whatever you want to restore, you have to do it (semi-)manually or use third party tools. Right now, the archive merely serves as a personal backup, nothing more.
So what are your options? You can re-add your old friends as shown above, re-upload photos you downloaded from your old account, re-tag your friends in your photos, re-join groups you were a member of, re-add Facebook apps, manually re-do all your personal settings, including general account and privacy settings, e.g. secure your Facebook account, add trusted contacts, or hide your personal settings. I wish I had good news, but as I said before, you cannot auto-merge two accounts or restore data, so you essentially start from scratch.
Restore Account Data
Here comes the big letdown. There is no way to upload or otherwise import your archive to restore or transfer data from your old Facebook account to your new one. Whatever you want to restore, you have to do it (semi-)manually or use third party tools. Right now, the archive merely serves as a personal backup, nothing more.
So what are your options? You can re-add your old friends as shown above, re-upload photos you downloaded from your old account, re-tag your friends in your photos, re-join groups you were a member of, re-add Facebook apps, manually re-do all your personal settings, including general account and privacy settings, e.g. secure your Facebook account, add trusted contacts, or hide your personal settings. I wish I had good news, but as I said before, you cannot auto-merge two accounts or restore data, so you essentially start from scratch.
This article first appeared at www.makeuseof.com
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