05/18/2019
How To Use Your Facebook Friends List To Create A Contact List
Facebook is a powerful tool for online sales and networking, but it can be tedious to build a contact list from your chats and texts, and it is definitely NOT an efficient way to do this. IF you want to build an effective, but simple spreadsheet to gather and track your Facebook contacts, this is a relatively simple way to do that.
The first step is to get the data off of Facebook in a useful format. This is how I did it.
How to Download your “Friends” Data off of Facebook.
Log onto your page.
Click on the dropdown arrow in the blue bar on the top right of the page.
Click on “Settings”
Click on “Your Facebook Information” near the top left of the page
Click on “ Download Your Information” near the top-center of the page
Now you can choose what data you would like to download.
Select :
Date Range - All of my data
Format - HTML
Media Quality - Medium (This only matters if you are downloading pictures, videos or music)
Then uncheck all the boxes below EXCEPT “Friends” (deselect all, then check “friends”).
Facebook should tell you your file is being created. It will take a few, depending on the number of contacts and how long you have had the account. It will give you a notification when the data is ready to download and may ask you to re-enter your Facebook password. You can then download this as a ZIP file. Make sure you know where you are downloading it to… it generally goes to your default “Downloads” folder.
You can then extract the file using your favourite “zip” app (I use “7zip”), and open it in your preferred browser (I use Chrome).
Making Your “Contacts” Spreadsheet
Once you have the file open in your browser, select all (control A ), and then open your favourite spreadsheet program. (I use Google Sheets, but you can use Excel or whatever you prefer) select the first cell, and paste (Control V).
There, now you have the data… but its a bit of a mess, so you will have to clean it up a bit. Unfortunately, the date you added each person is entered in a line under their name, so you will probably want to delete every second row (all the dates). That's a bit of a pain, but not too bad. The easiest way to do this is:
Click on the number of the row you wish to delete. This should select (grey-out) the whole row.
Hold down the “control” key, and select more rows. When you have them selected, right click on a selected row (still holding down the “control” key), then click “delete selected rows”.
I strongly suggest you only do 10 or so at a time. This way, if you mess up, it's easier to spot and undo it right away. (Control Z for undo, Control Y for redo)
I know, that was tedious, but now you have the start of a great database for leads.
Now you can fine tune this spreadsheet to better meet your specific needs. You can add columns for notes, email address, dates contacted, items purchased, or whatever you need to track. You can copy data out to a new sheet, and have a sheet for each month, or type of sale. You can sort the data by any of your column headings. You can update it and play with it as needed. You can also pate in data from other programs.
Pro tip - Make a note of the date you downloaded your Facebook data, then, when you need to update, you can select a date range from that date, and only grab the new data. If you are adding data from other platforms, also make a note of which platforms, as well as the date last updated for each.
This is a page for people who want to create a shift in their lives. I will be posting tips and tricks to up productivity and empower you. Welcome!
