Teaching Facebook

At this time, friend finder is capable of looking directly at email address books for certain email domains (e.g., @hotmail.com). If the error message, "Unsupported Email Address" appears, then this feature cannot automatically look at the address book of your email address to find your friends.

However, you can still use this feature if your email client (the program you use to read your email) allows you to export your contacts list as a .csv, .vcf, or .txt file. Uploading this file to Facebook will allow us to use it to tell you which of your contacts are on the site. For more detailed instructions on how to do this with specific clients, please see the bottom of the Friend Finder page.

In the future, we hope to expand the feature's capabilities to serve the needs of a wider range of users. In the meantime, please feel free to utilize our other search and invitation tools.

Don’t worry — this is a recommendation from Facebook. It isn’t an advertisement. Advertisements on the home page appear in the right-hand column beneath the "Sponsored" title, while the friend finder prompt appears above the ads section, under the "Featured" title.

Please note that the following principles apply:

• People may only appear in a friend finder prompt if they have ever used the Friend Finder feature, which many use soon after they sign up for Facebook.
• When you or your friends use the friend finder, we may suggest that other friends use the tool, but we don’t share any information about our use of that tool with those friends.
• If you are seeing a deceased user appear in this prompt, it’s likely that his or her account has not yet been memorialized. Please report this information here.

Some users are finding that Flickr stories are no longer importing to their Walls. No further reports are needed at this time.

You can invite friends on your AIM Buddy List by first clicking "Find Friends" from the Friends drop-down at the top of any Facebook page. On the following page is the option to use the AIM Instant Messenger Friend Finder. Once you have selected this option, you will then need to enter your AIM Screen Name and AIM Password into the appropriate fields. You can then select which of your friends you want to send friend requests to or invite to Facebook.

Friends on your AIM Buddy List will be sent instant messages that inform them that you have added them as a friend. If the person already uses Facebook and has their AIM Screen Name listed on their account, they will be sent a friend request. If the person does not use Facebook yet or has not listed their AIM Screen Name, they will be sent an invitation via AIM to join Facebook. If the person is not online at the time the invitation is sent, they will receive it the next time they log in.

The Facebook Bot (AIM: facebook) will alert your friends of invitations and friend requests that you send to them when using the AIM Instant Messenger Friend Finder. If you wish to stop the Facebook Bot from contacting you in the future, you can type "stop" or "cancel" into an instant message with the Facebook Bot. You can learn more about what the Facebook Bot can do by typing "help" into an instant message with the Facebook Bot.

Outlook
To export a CSV or tab-delimited text file from Outlook:

1. Open Outlook
2. Select "Import and Export" from the File menu
3. When the wizard opens, select "Export to a file" and click "Next"
4. Select "Comma separated values (Windows)" and click "Next"
5. Select the Contacts folder you would like to export and click "Next"
6. Choose a filename and a place to save the file (for instance, "Contacts.csv" on the Desktop), then click "Next"
7. Confirm what you are exporting: make sure the checkbox next to "Export..." is checked and click "Finish"

Outlook Express
To export a CSV or tab-delimited text file from Outlook Express:

1. Open Outlook Express
2. Select "Export" from the "File" menu
3. Click "Export", and then click "Address Book"
4. Select "Text File" (Comma Separated Values), and then click "Export".
5. Choose a filename and a place to save the file (for instance, "Contacts.csv" on the Desktop) and click "Next"
6. Click to select the check boxes for the fields that you want to export, and then click "Finish". Please be sure to select the email address and name fields
7. Click "OK" and then click "Close"

Windows Address Book
To export a CSV file from Windows Address Book:

1. Open Windows Address Book
2. From the "File" menu, select "Export", then "Other Address Book..."
3. When the "Address Book Export Tool" dialog opens, select "Text File (Comma Separated Values)" and click "Export"
4. Choose a filename and a place to save the file (for instance, "Contacts.csv" on the Desktop) and click "Next"
5. Click to select the check boxes for the fields that you want to export, and then click "Finish". Please be sure to select the email address and name fields
6. Click "OK" and then click "Close"

Mozilla Thunderbird
To export an LDIF file from Mozilla Thunderbird:

1. Open Mozilla Thunderbird
2. Select "Address Book" from the "Tools" menu
3. When the address book window opens, select "Export..." from the "Tools" menu
4. Choose a filename and a place to save the file (for instance, "Contacts.ldif" on the Desktop) and click "Save"

Palm Desktop
To export a CSV file from Palm Desktop:

1. Open Palm Desktop
2. Display your contact list by clicking the "Addresses" icon on the lefthand side of the screen
3. Select "Export" from the "File" menu
4. When the dialog box opens, enter a name for the file you are creating in the "File name:" field; select "Comma Separated" in the "Export Type" pulldown menu; be sure to select the "All" radio button from the two "Range:" radio buttons
5. A second dialog box "Specify Export Fields" opens. Leave all of the checkboxes checked, and click "OK"

Palm Desktop (vCard)
To export a vCard file from Palm Desktop:

1. Open Palm Desktop
2. Display your contact list by clicking the "Addresses" icon on the left hand side of the screen
3. Select the contacts you would like to export
4. Select "Export vCard..." from the "File" menu
5. Choose a filename and a place to save the file (for instance, "Contacts.vcf" on the Desktop), then click "Save"

Entourage
To export a tab-delimited text file from Entourage:

1. Open Entourage
2. Select "Export" from the "File" menu
3. Select "Local Contacts to a list (tab-delimited text)"
4. Click the "Next" arrow
5. Choose a filename and a place to save the file (for instance, "Contacts.txt" on the Desktop), then click "Save"
6. Click "Done" in the confirm dialog

Mac OS X Address Book
To export a vCard file from Mac OS X Address Book:

1. Open Mac OS X Address Book
2. Select the contacts you would like to export
3. Select "Export vCards..." from the File menu
4. Choose a filename and a place to save the file (for instance, "Contacts.vcf" on the Desktop), then click "Save"

LinkedIn
To export a CSV file from LinkedIn:

1. Sign into LinkedIn
2. Visit the Address Book Export page
3. Select "Microsoft Outlook (.CSV file)" and click "Export"
4. Choose a filename and a place to save the exported file (for instance, "Contacts.csv" on the Desktop)

Other
Many email clients and PIM programs allow contacts to be exported to a file. We support the following types of contact file:

• Comma-separated values (.csv)
• vCards (.vcf)
• Tab-delimited text (.txt)
• LDAP Data Interchange Format (.ldif)

Please check your email client's documentation to see whether contact export to one of these formats is supported. If it's not, you can make a suggestion for us to add support for the contact file format that your email client is capable of exporting.

You can remove contacts you uploaded using friend finder here.

Although we cannot retract invitations that have already been sent, you can delete contacts from your Invite History list. This will prevent any future invitation reminders from being sent to these people.

When using friend finder to send friend requests and invite people to Facebook, please make sure to use your email password and not your Facebook password. In addition, please ensure that the password is less than 17 characters and does not contain any strange characters (passwords must be a combination of letters/numbers). If you are still unable to use this feature, please submit a report here.

Please make sure that the file follows the format below:

1. First line contains the words "Email Addresses"
2. The following rows only contain email addresses and no other type of information (name, location, etc.)

If you continue to experience problems, please submit a report here. Please note that Facebook may need a copy of your address book (e.g. comma separated value - .csv file) to troubleshoot the problem. However, we will not send any invitations on your behalf.

Find questions and answers from other users here.

People You May Know helps you find people you are likely to know. We show you people based on mutual friends, work and education information, networks you’re part of, contacts you’ve imported using friend finder and many other factors.

Since our formula is automatic, you might occasionally see people you don’t know or don’t want to be friends with. To remove them from view, just click the X next to their names. Remember: Facebook will never send friend requests to anyone that shows up in this list on your behalf.

People You May Know can appear:

• On the Find friends page
• On your home page
• In your site orientation (if you just created a Facebook account)
• In ad space around the site

If you would like to see more friend suggestions, go to the Find friends page.

People You May Know helps people find and connect with other people that they’re likely to know, most often friends of friends. If you don’t want appear in this box for people on Facebook who are not friends of friends, you can lower your visibility to friends of friends:

1. Choose the "Privacy Settings" option in the Account drop-down menu at the top of any Facebook page.
2. Select "View settings" in the "Connecting on Facebook" section.
3. Change the settings for "Search for you on Facebook" and "Send you friend requests" to "Friends of Friends".

If you have ever used friend finder, the People You May Know feature may show people who have your email address in their address book and/or contacts that you have in your address book. If you would like Facebook to remove these contacts, please follow the instructions found here.

Please report this information here, so we can memorialize this person’s account. Memorializing the account restricts profile access to confirmed friends only. Please note that in order to protect the privacy of the deceased user, we cannot provide login information for the account to anyone. We do honor requests from close family members to close the account completely.

From the Find Friends page, scroll down to “People You May Know” and click “See all.” This will bring you to the friend browser page. Here, you can filter the “People You May Know” by:

• Hometown
• Current location
• School
• University
• Employer
• Mutual friend

If you check multiple boxes in the same section (for example, if you select the current locations New York and San Francisco), you will see people who have listed their current location as either New York or San Francisco.

If you check multiple boxes in different sections (for example, if you select current location San Francisco and employer Facebook), you will see people who have listed their current location as San Francisco and work at Facebook.