How Do You Delete Your Facebook Account And Start From Scratch
Note: Some information in this post may be outdated. Please use this post as a guide only, not step-by-step instructions.
Earlier this year, I went through my Facebook Profile and read all the status updates and comments I have posted way back in 2006 when I first joined Facebook. Reading back 4+ years, I was really embarrassed in what some of the things I said. I wanted it gone and removed. I started deleting some things, but found it near impossible to delete all this information, so I asked myself “how do i delete my Facebook?”. From that point, I decided I should delete my Facebook account and start again from scratch. In doing so, their are a few things that you need watch out for to make the process clean and easy as Facebook makes it somewhat difficult to delete your profile. To help you out, I have put together this brief tutorial on how you can delete your Facebook account and start again.
By following this tutorial, you will be able to use your same email address, Facebook username, and password, but you will lose everything such as status updates, posts, comments, pictures and friends.
So how do you delete your Facebook account: Before You Begin
Before you being, I must stress, that you will lose all your friends you have and everyone will need to re-add you or re-confirm your friendship. Some people may or may not want to re-add you back as a friend on Facebook, so just be careful. I would also take note of all your friends you have to make it easier to remember who to add.
I would also tell your friends that you are deleting your account, so if they get another friend request from you, they will know it’s not a fake. Or they may ask you questions why you deleted them in the first place.
Update: If your account is the administrator of any groups, or pages, it is highly recommended that you assign someone else as an administrator of that page of group so when you delete your account, there will be someone that can reassign you as an admin (and so your page doesn’t get deleted). If you are the only admin for your page or group, get someone you trust to become an administrator temporarily.
I must also warn you that you complete these steps at your own risk, because you may lose important information such as your applications and games, ad’s, credits, and other important account information that is not covered in the scope of this tutorial. If you do run into trouble, contact me and I will try my best to help you out.
WARNING: FOLLOWING THESE STEPS WILL COMPLETELY WIPE YOUR FACEBOOK ACCOUNT DELETING ALL YOUR FRIENDS, POSTS, COMMENTS, APPS, GAME PROGRESS, FACEBOOK CREDITS. THERE IS NO WAY TO UNDO THIS ACTION!
Note: This method is only for deleting personal Facebook accounts. If you delete a page, it will be deleted straight away.
Step 1: Know The Difference Between Delete And Deactivate
It’s important to note the difference between the two, and I have previously written a post about the difference and how you go about the deleting and deactivating your account. In this tutorial, you are going to delete your account – but don’t do it just yet, just read and understand the difference.
Step 2: Backup Your Facebook Account
When I deleted my Facebook account, I didn’t have the option to backup and download my Facebook information. So before you delete your account (where everything you publish on Facebook will be lost forever), you are first going to backup your data. To do this, click on “learn more” in your Account Settings next to “Download your information”. You can access your Account Settings by visiting https://www.facebook.com/editaccount.php
You will then be presented a number of steps and security measures before you can download your profile.
Once you have downloaded your information, continue to Step 3.
Step 3: Change Your Email Address, Password, And Username
This is a crucial step, because if you don’t do this, you won’t be able to use Facebook for at least two weeks using the same login details. Back in your Account Settings, first of all, change your email address to another email address that you have. We are doing this, so you will be able to instantly signup with your same email address later on in Step 5. Also change your password and username. It is also important to do these so you can keep your original Facebook username (I.e. www.facebook.com/yourprofileusername) (See update below) and to stop other devices such as your mobile phone or laptop accidently logging in to your account and stopping the deletion process. Once you have done all this, continue to Step 4.
Update: A commenter mentioned, that there is a Facebook FAQ stating that usernames cannot be transferred between accounts, so the changing your username step may no longer work, so try this at your own risk.
Step 4: Delete Your Account
Now that you have backed up your profile, have changed your email address, password, username, and told your friends you are deleting your account, you can now finally go through the deletion process.
To delete your account, click on https://ssl.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account and follow the process. I won’t explain it step by step because I don’t want to delete my Facebook account. But it will take at least 2 weeks for it to be fully deleted. Do make sure you read each step carefully.
Step 5: Sign Back Up To Facebook
Now it’s time to sign back up to Facebook. You should be able to simply register your account using your original email address and password because we changed it in Step 3. Once you have confirmed your account, you can follow Facebook’s basic instructions, re-add the information to your Wall and Profile and re-add all your friends.
Just a tip, you may not be able to register your username straight away. It took me a couple of weeks before I could re-register my old username.
Step 6: You’re Done
So once you have added all your friends again, you have now successfully started your Facebook account from scratch. You may have thought the question “how to delete my Facebook account” isn’t so hard after all. All you had to do is follow the right procedure to crate a new Facebook account. For some further reading, you may want to read how I protect my personal and online identity so people like future employers don’t read the naughty things you get up to. Another thing I regularly do is delete any status updates and comments I post, so I don’t have to do this again in another 4 years. If I maintain it now, it makes it easier later on.
If you need some assistance on how do you delete your facebook account, I am happy to help you out. Just leave your message in the comments.
want to delete facebook and activate it again soon later
In that case, you want to “deactivate” your facebook account, not delete.
Delete and Deactivate is the same, apart from when you deactivate it, nothing is deleted, just everything is removed from view until you reactive Facebook again. Read [url]http://www.jackcola.org/blog/104-how-to-delete-and-deactivate-your-facebook-account[/url]
I created a new business page. Since I can’t contact anyone until I have 30 likes, I tried to send an invite through facebook by saving emails from thunderbird and uploading the file into facebook. I previewed the invitation and saw the email addresses checked off but the email was never sent. I tried this twice but the recipients didnt receive the email from facebook. I just tried again with a test email with a gmail csv file instead. I dont know whether this went through.
Is there any way to just search in facebook for names to invite? I dont see this option in my new page. I dont have another facebook account since I deleted this a few weeks ago.
My best guess is when you exported your email accounts from Thunderbird, you had a syntax error when importing them into Facebook. E.g you might have had other data or ; instead of , for example, thus the importing failing.
If you go to your Facebook page, select “Build Audience” you have options to connect to your email accounts to export your email addresses.
Let me know if you have any problems.
Jack,
After thunderbird, i created a gmail folder in my address book and also went to my yahoo contacts and followed facebooks instructions to invite them. All the emails were checked off while in facbook so I assumed it imported those contacts and I got no responses. I have a friends email on my list to test it with. Is theree any other way to add friends to a new business page?
Thank you
You basically have to ask people to click on the like button. Facebook has some suggestions though. Just log in as your facebook page, and visit this link [url]https://www.facebook.com/pages/edit/?sk=market[/url] (or edit your page, and click on resources on the left hand side).
This will show a few articles of best practices and some website tools you can use to get people to like your site. Like the ones I have on this site.
Jack,
I just deleted my mjgdesigns facebook page. I know that I need to wait 2 wks before creating it again. Will I be able to use the same name for my business page in 2 weeks or is facebook going to tell me that the name is taken already?
thanks,
madeleine
Why did you delete the page? That’s not what I said to do in my email.
Deleting Pages is different from deleting accounts. Pages you can delete them straight away. If you’ve registered a username with it, you won’t be able to reuse the username.
The above is only true if you set up a business account. I.e. you don’t have a personal profile assigned to manage the page.
I know so I undeleted the page and looked to see if I can change the user name but I can only change the email address and cant invite anyone until I get the emails to work so I have given up on the mjgdesisgns facebook page for now. I do have a separate personal and separate business facebook page under my own name
Remember, you can only set a username on a Facebook page if you have more than 25 likes on the page.
I have juat about had it with FB. I have a profile and I enjoy communicating with friends which by the way most of them are new. Why on earth is a social network created only to contact existing friends. That is pure bull. I have seen people with 2000 and even 5000 friends. It is discrimination and when I do send to someone I am not sure about I am always in constant fear that my requests will be blocked. Can this not be made very very simple. If people do not wish to be contacted by STRANGERS (sic) there should be some sign on their profile. After all the reason I wish to add more and more friends is that I post beautiful pictures of pets, landscapes, birds and interesting travel locations. Why is it considered SPAM? I think it is disgusting with all the technology today that just because you try to add someone a friend you are punished. Take a look at TAGGED….those people who do not wish to add me..simply ignore my request. End of story. Can something be done to stop this abuse? Thanks and regards
[quote]Why on earth is a social network created only to contact existing friends. That is pure bull.[/quote]
I guess that’s a matter of opinion. I like how Facebook is only to contact existing friends. I don’t want strangers talking to me about my personal life, nor do I want to tell strangers what I do in my personal life.
Thus why I created a Facebook page to segregate private from public.
[quote] I have seen people with 2000 and even 5000 friends. It is discrimination and when I do send to someone I am not sure about I am always in constant fear that my requests will be blocked. [/quote]
Yes, people do have friends counts into the 2000’s. Some people just add every single person they know and have met, other people only add those you they know and are good friends, not random strangers met at parties.
With your comment here, it doesn’t sound like Facebook is the social networking site for you. Have you tried out Google+, Diaspora, Twitter or Microsof’ts [url]so.cl[/url]? They seem to to be more of what you are after.
Plus, it’s not really discrimination. If you add me to Facebook, I will ignore your friend request because I don’t know you. People don’t really like adding strangers to Facebook. So just add people you know and talk to in person.
[quote] If people do not wish to be contacted by STRANGERS (sic) there should be some sign on their profile[/quote]
People can set there privacy settings to have only friends of friends send them friend requests or messages, however, people set this to everyone incase long lost primary school friends decide to add them to Facebook.
[quote]After all the reason I wish to add more and more friends is that I post beautiful pictures of pets, landscapes, birds and interesting travel locations. Why is it considered SPAM?[/quote]
The definition of spam is "electronic messages a person does not want to receive" So if you bombard your friends on Facebook with pictures of pets and landscaps, they may get annoyed and just unfriend you because you are annoying them. It’s the same for being unfriended for commenting on every single status of someone’s facebook. They will find it creepy.
I think what you are after is a Facebook page, that way, if people like what they see, they can like your Page, that what you don’t have to friend people.
[quote] I think it is disgusting with all the technology today that just because you try to add someone a friend you are punished.[/quote]
I think you need to take into account who you are adding as friends. Know the people on Facebook. What you are doing on Facebook is like wearing a business suite to the beach or a speedo’s to an office. Of course people will act differently towards you.
[quote]Take a look at TAGGED….those people who do not wish to add me..simply ignore my request. [/quote]
And this is how Facebook works. But with Tagged, I was being spammed with friend requests I don’t want. So many emails.
[quote]Can something be done to stop this abuse?[/quote]
What abuse?
And Facebook is blocking your requestions because you are sending too many per hour. The people with 5000 friends, add those friends over 3-4 years.
I want to delete my facebook but i know it takes a few days i was wondering will people be able to see my facebook in the couple of days that it takes facebook to delete it ?thanks its very important.
No, once you submit the delete request, your information is hidden for public (your account is essentially deactivated).
This provides a 14 day grace period before your data is actually deleted (just in case you change your mind)
I accidentally opened a new facebook over my old one. How can I retreive my old one???
I used my same user name and same pass word.
Hi Mary,
It would be impossible to do that, unless you deleted or changed your old email address first.
Logins go by email address, so if you used a different email address, you will have a different FB account. Two FB account’s cannot be associated with one email address.
Why not drop password and make email hidden?
Because the email address would still be associated with the account. Hiding an email address does not remove the email address.
It’s really helpful. thanks.
but i have another problem. when i wanted to help my friend registering/sign up to face book from the same computer I was logging in, i couldn’t continue the regristration process.
here is the the note on the screen:
Sign Up
It’s free and always will be.
You are ineligible to register for Facebook.
Could you help me with this?
thanks before.
You are only allowed once Facebook account, so since you are already logged in, trying to create another account, Facebook thinks you are the same person, thus blocking you from creating another account.
Make sure you log out of your account first.
If it still doesn’t work, power cycle your modem and then register a new FB account straight away.
Also, read this FAQ [url]http://www.jackcola.org/faq?catid=4&faqid=48[/url]
Thanks for the information.
As you’ve already done this I was wondering about the username process since Facebook states in the FAQ (http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=15087) that it isn’t made available for a new account for security reasons. Does changing it prior to deletion free it up?
Hi James,
Thanks for that link. I am not sure when that was added, because I did the exact steps I mentioned above, and I kept my username. Maybe they have changed the process?
Then again, it might be a small bug. Since your email address is the same for the account, it may let you have it again? Who knows. But I couldn’t tell you the exact answer. I will update the post to reflect this.
Hi Jack
I deleted my FB account over a year ago because, I wanted my privacy, my life is just not that interesting and I really don’t need to know someone just left their house or had 20 drinks.
My problem is that many things I am interested in, like Pintrest, can only be accessed through logging into FB.
My question is if I register for FB MUST I set up a profile/interest page that will be displayed like I previously had? All I want to do is see what I want to see and log off. No interest in friends etc.
Can this be done?
TY
Syl
You can create an account, but don’t upload anything at all, and just set your profile to basic.
The only things you really have to provide is your name and email, gender and date of birth, but you can hide all this information on your profile later.
i have deleted my account and forgot to change my email address. I want to signup for the same email address but i can’t… why?? 🙁 please help!!! 🙁
i have also read somewhere that i will be able to restore my account after the 2 weeks of the permanent deletion process have passed.. is it true???
Yes, to be able to change your email address, just log back in.
You have 14 days to log back in and to reactivate your account before it gets permanently deleted.
Once in, change your email address and go through the deletion process again.
So I did all the steps, I waited 2 weeks and was able to re-use my email address and password, thanks! So what do I do now with the information I archived from the old page. How do I get it on the new page?
Thanks!
You can’t. The point of deleting your account is to [i]deleting everything[/i].
Your only options is to republish everything (but you can’t do it all at once as FB will flag you as spamming. This is for comments though.
For photo’s, just reuploaded them.
In terms of Facebook pages, unless you made someone an admin previously, you will have lost your page.
please 🙁 wanna start over on face book.it,s been 3 too long,let,s get startec from the beginning ok.delete all my old e mails an
Just follow the instructions I provided in the article.
I’ve followed step by step.
Changed email/password/username etc.
I’ve just deleted my account, and have tried to register. Do you have to wait 2 weeks? Is that vital.. I think I misread your step and i’m unsure about it!
Thanks for the info thougH!
Just make sure you delete all emails associated with your Facebook account.
Once the email is no longer registered you should be able to create a new email account with it, and don’t have to wait the 2 weeks.
Thanks for the advice! I have just followed the above steps, including the changing my email address etc, but could only set the new email address as the primary address and not actually delete the old one. I am doing this so as to be able to instantly sign up with the same email address but am told that I cannot sign up as an account with that email address already exists. I had thought this would enable instant re-sign but am struggling. Will I need to wait 2 weeks despite following the change of email address theory. Need to get it all sorted asap! Appreciate the help!
You used to be able to do this. Did Facebook now change it so you can’t?
Make sure you add the new email address, set it as a primary, and then try again to remove the old email address.
Let me know if you can confirm you can no longer perform step 3 for the email address, thus changing your account over instantly.
I can confirm that I wasn’t able to do it (set a new email address as the primary and remove the original email address altogether) but I wouldn’t want to assume that means it can’t be done as it could very much just be user error on my part!! I have now waited the 14 days and can finally sign up with a new account using that email address. Amazing how quickly time flies so wasn’t as much of a hardship as I had originally envisaged.
I really appreciate the help and guidance; much of the process was still incredibly helpful and you are a diamond for selflessly taking the time to help!
Hi Laura,
I am glade my help as helped you achieve the goal you wanted to reach and that everything has worked out for you.
If you have any further questions or comments, please don’t hesitate and let me know.
Jack
I loged out accidently an can’t get in again please could u make me an account n reply to the txt :ooo:
Hi Nicola,
Please read [url]http://www.jackcola.org/faq?catid=4&faqid=56[/url]
Hey JC, yesterday I mistakenly sent a rude message to someone in rush. Immediately after that I deactivated my account and in process to delete. Will the person see the message in my name in inbox?
Unfortuantly, I think so.
Contact a friend who you have sent a message to recently in the past, and see if that message is in their inbox. If it is, then they will see it. If it is not, then they might not.
Also, if the person has email notifications on, they might be sent an email with your message.
If they do read it, you could say you where really drunk, or that someone hacked into your account and sent it.
All the best!
😡 I guess most of you don’t know this, but there’s a little thing called the Web Archive that goes thru and takes pictures of all the websites on the Internet periodically. Old sites that don’t even exist anymore can be viewed on the WayBack Machine thingamajig on the website. It is located at http://archive.org/web/web.php . I found my Myspace from like 2001, and it’s full of humiliating stuff that is still there for the world to see. They’ll delete those things if you ask them to, but if anyone went through it and decided to take screen shots or download your pics, they’ve got them on their computer, and so on. People don’t realize how public the internet really is. When you post something out here, it’s here to stay.
Is, and there are automated scripts that can do that. For example, Facebook. Every notification I get, I get it emailed to me. So if someone where to write something offensive, or have an argument on my status or a status I have commented on, I will have a copy of the entire thread, even after they have deleted it.
My problem is that I signed up for face book, but apparently really messed up. Now there are 6 listings with my name, and I have a rather rare name. But the big deal is that when I search to find my friends that encouraged me to get face book, there is no such name. AND on the account when I click the find friends icon, it doesn’t go anywhere. Just signed up last week and still can’t get where I’m told I need to be. I just want to contact and chat with my dear old friends. I got a new gmail account just for this, and I don’t know what to do at this point. Any help in un-confusing this older person would be greatly appreciated.
Hi,
Let’s go back to the start.
How many accounts did you actually create? If it’s one, just keep using that. If it’s multiple (I.e you would also have to use different emails addresses), then delete the ones you don’t need.
When searching for people, it searches all of Facebook in the world. And with over 900 million people, it may return results of other people.
Because you haven’t added many friends to Facebook yet, it doesn’t know who is a friend and who is a stranger with the same name. Once you start adding people who are mutual friends, you will see Facebook to start suggestion people in your social circle.
Until now, try to add people by searching for their email address, or directly going to their Facebook URL. E.g http://www.facebook.com/jackcola.org (that’s me!).
You can even import your contacts from your email account too to get the ball rolling.
Or better yet, get your friends to add you. Send them your Facebook Profile URL and tell them to add you as a friend. Make sure you confirm their friendship as well.
Hope this helps.
I was a member of a Facebook Group recently. I have now removed myself from this group. I am also thinking of deleting my whole Facebook Account. Can you help with the following questions:
1. is there a quick an easy way to delete all my posts and comments in the Facebook Group?
2. If i delete my whole account as per your instructions, will all my comments and posts be removed from the Facebook Group as well as my wall and my friend’s walls?
Hi Toby,
1) There are quick ways, but they require third party apps, and usually, FB would ban them anyway.
2) Deleting your whole account as per my instructions will delete EVERYTHING. It will delete everything to a stage as if it were you never existed on Facebook previously. So groups, walls, likes, photo’s, video’s. Everything
Hi Jack. Just stumbling across this info. Recently I downloaded my entire FB account to my computer. If I now delete my account, following your instructions specifically, could I create a NEW ACCOUNT with a new name and selectively upload some of my previous account content – like photo albums for example? The bottom line is, I want to continue being on FB but with only about 1/2 the “friends” and I’d like to use a different name to “come back” in a more stealth fashion…but with the same content and photo albums.
Hi,
Photo’s and video, yes, you can reupload them. Status updates, not so much, as they are best to be in chronological order than bulk uploaded.
My advice to you is to delete all the friends you no longer want, and change your name through the Facebook account settings.
Then you don’t have to worry about anything else. Depending on the number of friends you have, it will take a few hours at the most.
Let me know if you have any questions or follow up concerns.
Regards,
Jack
Sorry I am not the best with technology and I have attempted to use this method but Facebook keeps coming up with “this email is already in use” I defiantly changed the email on my old account though. Please help me change this,
Lorraine 😀
Hi Lorraine,
Please read my comment below as it may help you [url]http://www.jackcola.org/blog/123-how-to-delete-and-start-your-facebook-from-scratch?joscclean=1&comment_id=2376#josc2376[/url]
Jack
Right this is gonna be a long message but please take the time to read it,
I’ve got a facebook account, and I decided to make another facebook account for a game. I used the same email adress for the new facebook account. Now I cant log into my main facebook account. So I’ve basicly deleted my main account without knowing that if I made a new facebook account it’ll delete my previous one. How can I get it back Please help me. I have all my friends on that account.
Hi Josie,
Facebook won’t let you reuse the same email address for two seperate Facebook accounts, so I am guessing you changed the email address on your primary account to something else.
If you set a username for your Facebook account, you can login with YOURSETUSERNAME@facebook.com as the email address, and with your password and you should be able to log back into your old account.
There are a few other things you can do, so let me know how that goes.
Thanks for all the information here!
I may have overlooked this in all you answers and apologize is so.
I have converted my profile to a business page( and did the facebook download of data) how do I reinstall all the post to my new page –
Thanks Again
bh
Off memory, I don’t think you can “bulk upload” status updates after you change from a personal to business Facebook account.
What if it says Your account is scheduled for deletion. Are you sure you wish to permanently delete your account? Because, I tried pressing both the options and it went straight back to my profile.
Well, you should only press the answer you want. Maybe try again. Let me know how you go.
okay um so well i was wondering if i delete mine from scratch can i still use my one and only email adress cause i dont have another and dont plan on making me another one and im good with the change name thing but wate do i have to do that too
You can, but you will have to wait for the 2 weeks otherwise Facebook won’t let you create another account since the email address is assigned to another profile.