Facebook
has rolled out a slick new feature recently that they made no
announcement of, and most people aren't even aware that it exists. So
here's a tutorial on exactly how to download the ENTIRE contents of your
FaceBook profile. It'll get
everything ... all of your
statuses, all comments on your statuses, all photos in your photo
albums, all inbox messages (no sent-box messages though

), and so forth, all the way back to when you signed up!
As
you can imagine, this can be very private, personal information, so be
sure to safeguard the file once it finishes downloading if you don't
want peeping eyes on it. On the other hand, FaceBook can sometimes be
squirrely and you never know if they may arbitrarily decide to delete or
block you out of your profile, so it's a good idea to grab it every so
often, just in case.
So let's get started, first you'll need to go to your Account Settings,
Next, look down to where it says "Download Your Information" and click "Learn more"
Now, read the information on this page just so that you know, and then click on the Download button
The
next screen you'll see is the following one. It's basically just
another informative screen saying it'll take a while to create. Click
the Download button
And another one, but this one just tells you to expect an email from FaceBook when it's all ready to download. Click OKAY
As
it's being prepared for you, the following screen is what you'll see if
you go back to the download page, until it's done. It took a few hours
or so for me to eventually get my email notice.
All
ready! Once you receive the email from FaceBook letting you know that
your profile is all ready to download, The first screen you'll see after
clicking your facebook profile download link is this one. You're asked
to re-enter your normal facebook password to confirm that it's really
you wanting to download the file. Do so and then click Continue ...just click the link in the email to begin the profile download process
Now
that you've confirmed that it's really you, and that you want to
download your facebook profile, you'll see this screen. It's more of the
same ... and also tells you the file size. Click Download Now ...
That pops up your standard file download dialog. Choose where you want to save it, etc., and click "OK."
After
it's done downloading, you'll be able to unzip the file, and it'll have
a directory structure all laid out, and an index.html file. You just
double-click on the index.html file to load it in your browser, and
it'll essentially be a clone of your profile as of the date you
downloaded it.
Things to note:
-
It does not
"auto-update" as you enter new statuses, get comments, add pictures,
etc. If you want the latest, you'll always have to go through this
process again, and re-download the latest copy of your facebook profile.
-
It has style sheets included, but they
weren't working properly for me at the time of this writing, so it
looked rather plain once loaded in your browser.
-
Again, be sure to hide, rename, encrypt,
whatever you need to do to keep this file private if you don't want
anyone else seeing it's contents.
-
There are some things missing in the
downloaded version, such as all other mailboxes besides your inbox,
unfortunately. You also can't see who "liked" your comments / statuses
if there are more than one, you just get the count. You also can't click
on some profiles, which would be a nice thing for facebook to add to
this. I'm sure there are more, but I haven't fully explored the
downloaded copy yet. Still, this is a nice start and am pretty impressed
/ happy that facebook added this feature.