One of the big problems of the 21st century is, “Can I download a copy of everything I’ve written on Facebook, onto my computer?”
Yes, from today it can be done and given that a lot of personal data are registered in Facebook which, all added up, can make the history of a person, the possibility of being able to download all the information on your Facebook account is absolutely welcome.
There are no tricks or strange programs this time, the personal data download function is available directly among the options of Facebook.
All inclusive, you can download every single piece of information that has been published on the social network: images, status updates, related comments, events, private messages, notes, and contacts.
Saving all Facebook information on your computer is not only important to review your history in full but also to keep this data in case there are problems with your account.
In fact, we know that you can be banned from Facebook if you break the regulation and that your account can be stolen or hacked.
Downloading all the data is also useful for storing information if you want to permanently delete yourself from Facebook, so, before leaving the ship, you can pack your bags and take them home.
I state that this is not a backup, in the sense that, if your account is closed, banned, or permanently deleted, you will not be able to bring this data back to a new Facebook account.
To download Facebook data, you need to go to the Account Settings page and then go to the “Your information on Facebook” tab.
Here you can read the inscription Download your information by clicking. (Note that there is also an option to transfer a copy of photos and videos to Google Photos).
On the page for choosing the data to download, it is possible to deselect and select what we are interested in saving on the PC:
- Published posts
- Photos uploaded and shared
- Videos uploaded and shared
- Comments posted on all our posts and others.
- “Likes” and reactions
- Friends added, removed, and friend requests
- People and Pages followed and who follow us.
- Messages in the Messenger chat
- Groups we belong to
- Events created and responded to
- Profile information
- Pages we are administrators of
- Marketplace
- Payment history
- Saved items and posts
- Your places
- Apps and websites accessed via Facebook account
- Other activities associated with the account
- Information about you, including the computers and smartphones, used to connect
- Ads and data advertisers collect about us.
- Search history
- Location history
- Calls and messages
- Access history
- Network information
Then select the one you want to keep and then press the Download button at the top right, choosing the file type, whether HTML (recommended) or JSON.
The download will be waiting for some time, even a couple of hours, depending on the amount of data in your account.
In theory, Facebook should send the data download link via email but you can also find the required download in the available files section of the data download page. To download the file when it is ready, the password must be re-entered.
Eventually, you will be able to download the .zip file to your computer which, for my account, the size of which varies greatly depending on the amount of photos uploaded to the profile.
Once the ZIP file has been downloaded, it can be extracted to a folder and the index.html file can be opened to browse the offline data.
From a menu on the left, you can choose to look at the entire history of status updates including “likes” and comments, notes, photos, private messages, events, and the complete list with names and surnames of friends and contacts.
