How to search for old items on your Facebook timeline
One of the greatest pain in every Facebook user’s ass is the inability to quickly search for something you posted before, whether it was a status, link, photo or something someone said in one of the replies. I had that problem earlier tonight and remembered seeing something somewhere that I never tried…
BINGO! I found my post through a search feature tucked away some place that wasn’t immediately visible, and I’m going to show you how I did it.
Go to your Timeline and click on ‘View Activity Log’. This will take you to the Activity Log page, which will show you snippets of what you’ve been up to on Facebook.
Yep, you guessed right. The ‘Activity Search’ field right on top of the page lets you input search strings.
I was looking for a particular post I made last week about ‘Kuching Lost and Found Pets‘, which is a Facebook Page that I run. So I entered that search string into the field and BOOM! It turned up several Search Results, with the post I was looking for right on top.
If it’s a status update, you need to hover your mouse cursor over the relevant Search Result, causing a tiny time stamp to appear. Clicking on it will bring you to your post. If it’s an image, clicking on the image will bring it up.
The Activity Search pulls up your posts in public Facebook Groups too!
If you want to filter your results by the type of post you made, poke around the sidebar for something that suits your searching needs.
Play around with it and if you find something interesting, let me know about it in the comments below.
And now you know!
Drooling Cat
Tried to photograph this old drooling cat at Tebingan BGS after the Urban Sketchers Kuching sketchwalk at Kampung Boyan only to find that Peggy accidentally switched my camera phone to burst mode. Got a series of photos instead.
How to stop Facebook game invites/requests
Every now and then, someone in your newsfeed will put up a plea or threat for friends to stop sending game requests or invites. I got news for you: the person you’re aiming it to is too busy playing games to notice. In fact, putting a stop to this is in your hands and it doesn’t involve unfriending people (unless you’re looking for an excuse to, then by all means go ahead).
Step 1
First, access your Games page under Apps.
Step 2
Click on Activity.
Step 3
I’m gonna stop here and clarify some terms on the tabs:
- Invites - games you’re not playing or not linked to your FB account, and probably the bane of your existence right now.
- Requests - games that you do play on FB or linked via mobile. These are lives and stuff that you want, so we’ll skip this bit.
Click on Invite, and you’ll see the invites broken down by type of games and which of your friends who are constantly annoying you with them. From here on, you need to identify two things:
- Popular games that everyone but you are playing
- The serial gamer who sent you invites for many, many games and apps.
If your Game Activity page is currently full of invites, you should be able to tell at a glance who the repeat offenders are. If you can’t remember, leave the game invites to pile up for a week.
Step 4
Observe that there are two buttons next to every invitation – X and Accept. For this example, I clicked on the X next to the first of the three invites one of my friends sent me for Candy Crush Saga. The invite is cancelled and you are presented with two options:
- Block [game]
- Ignore all requests from [friend]
If it is a popular game that I know I won’t be playing, choose ‘Block [game]’. Nobody will be able to send you any sort of request from that game.
If it’s a serial gamer who blindly send invites to everybody, choose the second option: Ignore all requests from [friend]. No matter what that friend plays, they will never be able to send you anything from any app.
Step 5
This is the dialogue box you get when you click ‘ Ignore all requests from [friend]’. Click OK and you’ll never get invited by this person to play a game or try any app ever again.
Step 6
I hit ‘Ignore All’ for CSI. This is the notification box you get (bottom).
I only had one invite after 24 hours of begging my friends to send me invites, so I have to conclude that they are either busy playing or already blocked. If you have a full page of invites, similar options will likely be available so pick the one most relevant to you.
Step 7
This is what it looks like when you choose ‘Block [game]’.
These steps also work if you’ve stopped playing a game but you’re still getting requests. Go to the Request tab (See Step 3) and block the game from there.
Occasional maintenance is necessary, especially when a new game or app hits the market. I’ve implemented this for my own profile a long time ago and game invites are extremely rare these days because all the usual suspects have been blocked.
Now you know!
