Capturing content from specific date ranges on Facebook
The methods in this article apply to personal profile timelines only. If you are capturing a page for a business or a public person, these methods do not apply.
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Important! New Facebook status as of October 20, 2020
Facebook has announced that it will be converting all users over to its new layout—called New Facebook—in September 2020. In the past, we have advised clients on how to use some of Facebook's hidden functionality for jumping to specific time periods on an individual's timeline. Unfortunately, Facebook appears to have removed these options entirely in New Facebook. Our team is currently doing quality assurance testing on new functionality to address this; we hope to have it available for clients soon.
In the meantime, we recommend using Classic Facebook rather than using the new layout—the navigation bar method (below) still works in Classic Facebook. You can read more about switching to Classic Facebook on this page.
Navigation Bar Method (Classic Facebook Only)
On the profile you want to capture, scroll down just a little bit until you see a banner across the top.
Click on “Recent” to get a drop-down menu with years. Select the year that you would like to capture. At this point, you can further select to jump to a month within that year.
Note: the top of the timeline now begins at the selected year or month, but it does not restrict the timeline to only that time period. If you continue to scroll to load additional posts, it will continue to load prior time periods—for instance, if you select 2015 and keep scrolling, eventually posts for 2014 and 2013 will also load.
Please read the rest of the instructions if you do not want to capture the entire remainder of the timeline.
If you are trying to capture everything from the selected date onward, run your capture as you would any other Facebook capture.
If only posts from a given time subset—e.g. a certain year or month—are desired, we recommend a two-step process rather than using the built in scroll and open comments:
When you click "Expand", select "scroll to the bottom"
Monitor the scrolling, and once you have loaded the correct date range, hit "Stop" on the Expander
Click "Expand" again, and select “open comments on currently loaded posts."
Once the comments have been expanded, use the "Capture" button to collect the loaded and expanded posts.
Date methods(by month and by year): No longer available in Facebook
In the past, we have advised clients on how to use some of Facebook's hidden functionality for jumping to specific time periods on an individual's timeline. Unfortunately, Facebook appears to have removed these options entirely in New Facebook. Or team is testing a new solution that we are aiming to release by late October 2020.
