Businesses have a different type of account on Facebook from personal accounts. What you need for your business or organisation is a PAGE that people can LIKE rather than a PROFILE that people can be FRIENDS with. This document outlines how you can convert a profile with friends into a page with fans - Facebook converts all your friends into fans so you don't lose the contacts you've built up.

1. Converting a
Facebook
Timeline into a
Facebook Page
Bryony Taylor
bryony@reachfurther.com
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2. Facebook Profiles and Page
Step 1: Saving your profile data
You will need to go through this process whether you are deleting a profile page or converting it into a
Facebook page. You only need to complete this step if you have a lot of photos and other content on
your profile that you want to save. If you have little or no content on your profile you can skip this
step.
Log in to Facebook as your Facebook Profile you wish to convert to a page or delete.
When you go through the conversion process these aspects of your profile are transferred:
 All your confirmed friends and subscribers will be converted to people who like your new
Page.
 Your timeline pictures will be migrated to your new Page.
All other content on your timeline (i.e., photo albums, profile information, etc.) will not be transferred.
You can, however, download all your data from your profile, so it’s best to do this first before moving
on to the next step. To do this click on the small arrow next to ‘home’ in the top right of your screen in
Facebook:
and then click on ‘account settings’, you will see this screen:
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3. Facebook Profiles and Page
Click on the ‘download a copy’ link (as highlighted in the image above). This will take you to this page:
Click on ‘Start my archive’ and then the page will show:
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4. Facebook Profiles and Page
This can take some time to do – my profile (which has existed since 2007 took about 3 hours). Don’t
do anything else until you get your email telling you the archive is ready. Once you get the email, click
on the link and you will be asked to re-enter your password and then you’ll see this screen:
Click on the green button ‘download archive’ and it will create a zip file for you of your data to
download. Save your data to a sensible place for your records once you have downloaded it – you will
need it later.
Step 2: Converting your profile to a page
To convert your profile to a page first login to Facebook as that profile.
Then click on this link: http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=18918 (or paste this link into your
browser).
Click on ‘How do I convert my profile (timeline) to a page?’ and click on ‘begin here’.
This will then take you through the steps to create your page.
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5. Facebook Profiles and Page
Step one the screen will look like this:
Choose which type of page you want to convert to. The box when you click it will look something like
this:
You will need to choose the appropriate category by using the drop down list. Add the name of your
Page in box below (this may have been already completed for you). NB – you can’t change the name
of the page once it’s set – make sure it is unique to you and not the same as another page!
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6. Facebook Profiles and Page
The next page is a bit scary:
Before carrying on make sure you have downloaded your profile data as explained above.
These are the things that are kept and automatically transferred for you:
 All your confirmed friends and subscribers will be converted to people who like your new
Page.
 Your timeline pictures will be migrated to your new Page.
All other content on your timeline (i.e., photo albums, profile information, etc.) will not be transferred
– but you should have all other content in the archive you have created when you saved your profile
data.
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7. Facebook Profiles and Page
Then when you have done that, click ‘confirm’, you may be taken to an auto captcha page something
like this:
Fill the words in the box (your words will be different from those shown above), click submit and your
page will be created.
Go through the instructions to populate your new Facebook Page – there are 3 steps (you can click on
skip on these if you like):
Then your new page, which will be in the new Timeline style (as of 29th February 2012) will look
something like this – with an admin panel at the top:
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8. Facebook Profiles and Page
You can then go about filling in all the relevant sections – click on ‘manage’ and then ‘edit page’ to fill
the details in on your new page. NB - Don’t be too worried if it says 0 ‘likes’ at first – it can take a few
hours to move these across from your old profile.
Step 3: What to do with your old data that you downloaded
Open the zip file you downloaded when you got your data from your Facebook profile before creating
your page.
There will be a series of folders inside this. If you open the file called Index.html it will open up a web
page of your old profile – if you wish, from here you can copy and paste the biography and other
details into your new Facebook page.
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9. Facebook Profiles and Page
You will also find folders with your photos and videos (if you had them on your old profile). To add
these to your new Facebook page you will need to manually go into your new Facebook page, click on
photos to upload them:
Click on the ‘add photos’ button.
Then it will open up your files on your computer – find where you saved the Facebook zip files and
choose the photos from there you wish to upload to your new Facebook page.
If you have any video content you can upload it in the same way by choosing ‘add videos’ instead of
‘add photos’ from the photos screen.
Conclusion
So that’s it! You have your new Facebook Page with all your friends moved across as fans and can
continue using Facebook as you were before but with a better functionality as a page and also more
‘legally’ with regard to Facebook’s terms and conditions!
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with Bryony Taylor at Reach Further:
0113 278 1800, email: bryony@reachfurther.com
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