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I'm admin of several large political pages. Because of this, my profile chronically suffers report-attacks (i.e.; enough number of people falsely report my profile) and make it suspended. This happens in about every six months. Facebook almost always ignores my appeals even if I send my identity paper to them, so it is no use contacting them for a fix. When this happens I lose hundreds of my friends, and it is very cumbersome to remember all of them and add them back.

I want to export a back up of my friend list (in HTML format with their names and hyperlinks to their profiles), so I can add them back by looking at that list.

I know that Facebook has an internal feature that allows you to download your data. I don't prefer using it, because it usually doesn't return back (I tried it several times, I could only get my data once). And if it lets me download my data, it gives a large bulk of messy data which is not I am looking for.

Is there any tool (maybe a userscript or browser extension) for backing up my friend list in Facebook?

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  • When you say internal feature are you referring to the API? If not, you might want to check out this SO answer re. downloading your friends list (though, admittedly, I don't think it has all of your requested features).
    – batpigandme
    Commented Jun 20, 2013 at 17:58
  • No, I wasn't referring to API.
    – hkBattousai
    Commented Jun 20, 2013 at 18:26

7 Answers 7

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This Facebook app did it for me.

Friend List Exporter https://apps.facebook.com/friendlistexporter

You can export it into different formats too. - Download a basic textual list of your friends. - Download a basic textual list of your friends with profile links. - Download an html list of your friends with profile links and profile pictures. - Download a spreadsheet (csv) of your friends with ID numbers, profile links, and profile picture links.

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  • 1
    This is useless--it does not include disabled accounts, even though they show up on one's friend list.
    – Display Name
    Commented Oct 23, 2014 at 2:28
  • 5
    No longer works as of the date on this comment.
    – user11187
    Commented Dec 6, 2015 at 6:01
  • 1
    @user11187 in case it helps, here is a self-hosted alternative I made: gist.github.com/baptx/666ae3a059bcac09d372030112666ac8
    – baptx
    Commented Feb 4, 2020 at 11:57
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    @JoshuaRobison I replied to your question on GitHub
    – baptx
    Commented Mar 21, 2020 at 14:16
  • 1
    Thank you. Now 2020/03/21 I was able to use this script flawlessly. It worked wonderfully. Thank you so much for this solution
    – Joshua Robison
    Commented Mar 24, 2020 at 14:26
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Unfortunately, any app that does this is shutdown because it's against the FB ToS. FB only allows fluff info like profile pic and general location, not the real info like emails and phone #s.

This was hotly debated at the beginning of 2008, when Plaxo tried to include this data in Plaxo Pulse.

Services like FriendCSV have all been shutdown since then.

Edit in response to the questions: automating retrieval / exporting of details of other Facebook users it against the Facebook Terms of Service.

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  • What specifically is not allowed?
    – Oren Hizkiya
    Commented Jun 30, 2010 at 23:45
  • What specifically isn't allowed is the pulling of Phone Numbers and Email Addresses. There are apps that can do this though, for example AddressBookSync for Mac lets you do this.
    – unlobito
    Commented Jul 1, 2010 at 1:21
  • Is it not possible to get simply a list of names and links to their profile photos?
    – Oren Hizkiya
    Commented Jul 1, 2010 at 2:52
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If a friend has turned off Facebook Platform entirely (under Account » Privacy Settings » Applications » What you're using) then that friend will not be seen by any Facebook Platform application.

Your friends can also block specific applications (Account » Privacy Settings » Block Lists » Blocked Applications), and can control whether certain information about them is accessible to any of your applications (Account » Privacy Settings » Applications » Info accessible through your friends).

Of course you could use a script on your own computer to access the Facebook site as you, and scrape the information from the page, but assuming you don't have permission from Facebook this is against the Facebook Terms of Service:

You will not collect users' content or information, or otherwise access Facebook, using automated means (such as harvesting bots, robots, spiders, or scrapers) without our permission.

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If you have a Yahoo account, then go to the Contacts tab, which gives a option to import Facebook contacts. Just import them, and you will get their account names along with email ids.

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Link gopher.... it is an application for Mozilla that "capture" links... so go to your Facebook friend page and then extract the names and http address of them. "Link Gopher"

Shift+right click and keep it pressed until you choose all the names and then open an excel to past the copied links... :)

It's a light app /addon... no messages are showed.

If they change names, then no luck!

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I was facing the same need. However, only to extract the names in Facebook friends list for some analytics.

Well, the approach I followed was to go to the basics.

STEP 1: COPY CAT

Click on Friends linnk -> Scroll and ensure FB lists all the friends names. Then go to the top (use 'Home' key, press Shift+Ctrl+End to select all data.. Then, without leaving the 'Ctrl+Shift' buttons scroll up and click at the end of your friends list.

STEP 2: PASTE MANIAC

Paste them into a notepad (I tried Excel and it hung owing to the images & other data). Trust me it took just a sec to copy 500+ friends!

STEP 3: DATA DETERGENT

Use notepad Replace (Ctrl +H) -> Type 'Friends', 'Friend' &'mutual' and Replace All with none.

Now, copy to MS Excel and give a title say 'Names' to the column. Select the column and add filters (Under 'Home' -> Sort & Filter -> Filter).

User the first filter option ('Sort A to Z') and wow.. Excel gives you a list of numbers, followed by blanks and lo, the names of your friends.. FRIENDS!!!

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In Facebook click on Friends then when the list comes up reduce the screen size to its smallest using your browser tools menu.

Then press Ctrl + Print Scrn then paste it to a Word doc. Move the list down to show the next lot of names and repeat until all done so you end up with a long word doc with the names as several jpegs.

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