Are you thinking about breaking up with Facebook? Well, you have plenty of reasons to do so. The social media site has been plagued with issues for years, and a recent massive six-hour outage is just one example.
It was the most prolonged outage since 2008, affecting users across Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp. Tap or click here to find out how it happened. After being unable to access their accounts, many users want to break up officially.
But first, you should figure out what to do with the content you’ve uploaded over the years. If you shut your account down without a plan, you risk losing all of your content. A tool makes it easy to transfer important content off the platform. We’ll show you what it is and how to use it.
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How to pull the plug on Facebook without losing your content
Breaking up with Facebook is a wise move, considering its issues. Some of us have been with Facebook for years, meaning we have several years’ worth of content tucked away on the site.
If you’ve been using Facebook as a digital photo album, you may not have copies of old photos and videos posted on your page. Fortunately, you don’t need a backup copy to part ways with Facebook. You can use the Data Transfer Project tool to export and store images and videos safely.
If you’re unfamiliar with the Data Transfer Project, here’s the gist. It was announced in 2018 to create an open-source, service-to-service data portability platform so people could quickly move data between online service providers whenever they wanted.
Shortly after the project was announced, Google rolled out a data portability tool to allow you to export images and videos from platforms like Facebook to Google Photos. The capabilities were limited to just Google Photos, though.
That changed recently, however, when Facebook expanded the use of the tool to let you export images and videos directly to Dropbox. This makes it easy to move and protect your content to a safe site when pulling the plug on your Facebook account.
If you want to move your photos and videos from Facebook to Dropbox via this tool, it’s easy to do. Let’s take a look.
RELATED: How to deactivate your Facebook account without deleting it
How to transfer videos and images
Before you begin, you’ll need to confirm that you have a Dropbox account. If you need a Dropbox account, it’s easy to set one up. Just tap or click this link and follow the steps.
Once you’ve set up your account, follow the instructions below. Make sure you have your Facebook password on hand before you start — you’ll be asked to input it during the process.
To import photos or videos from Facebook.com or the Facebook mobile app:
- Log in to Facebook.com or open the Facebook mobile app.
- Click the downward arrow in the top-right corner (web) or the three-line menu at the bottom of the screen (mobile).
- Select Settings & Privacy.
- Click Settings.
- Scroll down to the Your Information section.
- Click Transfer a Copy of Your Information. You may need to re-enter your password.
- Click Next. This takes you to the Choose Destination section. Select Dropbox from the dropdown menu.
- Choose whether you want to export your photos or your videos and click Next.
- You can only export one media type at a time. If you’d like to transfer both photos and videos, complete the process for one and repeat the steps to export the other.
- Sign in to your Dropbox account and allow Facebook Data Transfer to access your Dropbox account.
- Click Confirm Transfer. All your photos or videos uploaded to Facebook will be transferred to Dropbox. You can monitor progress on the “Transfer a Copy of Your Photos and Videos” page of your Facebook settings, and Facebook will send you a notification when the transfer is complete.
Once the transfer is complete, your imported images and videos will be saved in a new folder in your Dropbox account.
To find the folder on Dropbox.com:
- Sign in to dropbox.com.
- Click All files in the left sidebar.
- Select the Apps folder.
- Tap the Facebook Data Transfer folder.
- Click the Photo Transfer or Video Transfer folder. Photos and videos will be sorted by album, if applicable.
Now that you have safely transferred all of your essential files, are you ready to delete your Facebook account?
Sure, it’s a scary prospect since you’ve probably been using the site for years. But think of all the free time you’ll open up. Not to mention not having to worry about its security issues. Tap or click here to find out how to delete your Facebook account.
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