How to Move a Facebook Profile to a Fan Page

A problem that many organizations have faced is the issue of having an organizational Facebook “profile” instead of a Fan Page. This happens for various reasons: the profile was made before pages were announced, there was an error in the creation of a Facebook presence, a personal brand grew into a business brand, etc.

In the past there was no easy way to convert a Profile to a Page. A profile owner would have to ask it’s friends to like their page, countless posts would be made, and the “suggest to friends” option would be clicked on numerous times. Someone in this situation would be lucky to get 25% of their fans to transfer over.

About a week ago Facebook launched a new feature that profile and page owners have been waiting for – profile migration (moving a profile to a page). It wasn’t publicized very much, but there is now a quick way to convert a profile to a page and therefore friends to fans.

All you have to do is go to the new Profile Migration Page chose the type of page desired, and Facebook does the rest. It is important to remember that this migration will do three things:

Change your Profile to a Page
Move your profile photo to your page photo
Move your friends to fans of the new page

One thing to keep in mind is if a profile owner wants to migrate their profile to a current existing page, any custom work already done on the page (custom tabs, apps, etc) will be lost.

This is exciting news for profile owners who want their friends to become fans on a page. It’s a long awaited feature, thanks Facebook.

Have you used the new migration functionality? Let us know in the comments.

*Update* Facebook has seen a lot of people who converted their profiles to pages and want their profile back. They created this appeal form for those who mistakenly made the switch. They aren’t promising anything, but at least a form is a start.

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naiad17 5 pts

I have a profile page and created a Fan page (business page) last year. The rule was that once a Fan page reached 25 fans, you could separate the two for beneficial and obvious reasons. However, I am unable to do this now. Has the FB rule changed? Also, is there an easy way to take the photos from my profile page and dump them into my Fan page without having to uploading each photo one-by-one?

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I have a Profile page and a Fan Page (business page). I would like to keep them separate and the rule was once you reached 25 fans, you could separate the two. However, I can't seem to find a way to do this now. Has FB changed it's rules on this?

Iss there a way to transfer just the photos from my profile page to my Fan Page without having to upload each photo indivdually again?

Anna Bell 5 pts

Hi! Yesterday I clicked on the 'turn profile into bandpage'. The only problem is: Apparently I didn't press the "download your profile information' right, so now all my photoalbum + history since 2007 are gone!!!??? I did not receive any notification concerning this 'migration' to my e-mail...and I have no idea how to get all this profile content back!!!??? Please help me! Best, Anna

toutattache 5 pts

I'm afraid there is no undo Anna. facebook should definitely put a specific warning message.

Happened to me as well...

StuartJDavidson 5 pts

I think its gone now Anna. I am just migrating a clients personal profile to a business fan page and I had to download all their content so I can repost it when the fan page is complete.

I have had a hiccup during the transformation process, when it said the account is locked and needs the code from mobile (just waiting on owner to forward to me). I am sure it says before you confirm you must download profile content as it will be lost if you don't....

I ( stuartjdavidson ) will post how I get on / any other problems I had when I have finished

lifeloveinspire 5 pts

I didn't have a lot of friends on my profile but wanted those to just be "fans". I didn't use the profile much anyways so that's why I wanted to do the migration. It did it, but now I don't have a search bar, I can't become a fan of like any other pages and I don't have a feed of all the pages I like. So how can I interact as my page if I can't even see other pages??

ToddLiss 10 pts moderator

lifeloveinspire On the top left corner while logged into the admin of your page click "use facebook as (yourpagename)" this should let you interact with Facebook like your page was a profile

ToddLiss Yeah,I used to be there on the top right hand page,but after I migrated my Profile page to my Fan page its gone.

powerobject 5 pts

Hi, can you tell me how this profile/page was created as publicly viewable without having to login to facebook (indexable by search engines):

http://www.facebook.com/starbucks

How can I make a SEO page like the above?

I see some pages having Notes link in the sidebar in addition Info, Wall, etc. How did they put up a link to the notes in the sidebar?

2. I went through profile migration page, it resulted in some error, I tried it for the second time, it seemed to have done nothing except remove my profile, username, wall posts, etc - retaining my pages. Now, it results in an error page if I go to:

http://www.facebook.com/myusername

In the account settings, the username is empty/unassigned and if I choose my previous username, it says not available. Further, the top links such as Home, Profile, Find Friends, Account are GONE! The only links I see are Settings and Logout.

How can I undo profile migration?

Please help...

powerobject If you see above, there is a link to the profile migration appeal page. If you submit your info there, hopefully Facebook will set your profile back to the way it was. As for the left hand navigation, you can edit that when you are the moderator of the page and can chose which you want visible (except for a couple of options which have to be visible) and what order they appear in.

If you log into the admin account you should see a small "edit" below the navigation.

Hope that helps

SWCouponChic 5 pts

I am trying to migrate my profile to my existing page but I am not sure what I need to click on to be able to choose the option of an existing page. Please Help

SWCouponChic I'm pretty sure you can only move a profile into a NEW page. You'll have to make the new page and then ask/suggest all your fans on the old page to move over

jwaight6 5 pts

i have an existing fan page with 7,500 fans... if i use the migration tool will i lose any of those fans or the photos, wall posts, etc. on the fan page (i see that custom apps will be lost)?

jwaight6 I believe you can only migrate from a profile to a page. If you already have a page, not sure what you can migrate to

ToddLiss 10 pts

toutattache I don't know if Facebook will let pages switch to profiles - sorry

hapykorean I would manually ask and entice your friends to join one specific profile and then convert that to a page. I don't believe Facebook has released that functionality

toutattache hapykorean The post has been updated with the additional of Facebook's appeal process

Hey! I successfully migrated my facebook profile into a page. But that was just a test. How can I get my regular profile back?

Thank you very much if you can help!

toutattache I too am trying to get my regular profile back. The migration with the profile to fan page has completely messed things up for me since my fan page was the way I interacted with my blog/fan page fans.

hapykorean 5 pts

what can you do if you have multiple profile pages that you want to consolidate to a single fan page?

hapykorean I believe you can only transfer one to one :(

How to: Move your Facebook Profile to a Fan Page [Updated]

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