Did you know that you can save a post on Facebook so that you could return to it afterwards without having to search for it? Here’s how to save a post in Facebook (with thanks to Greg Robson for pointing this out and Dave Johnson for a note on the mobile app).

Why would I want to save a post on Facebook?

A good example came up just the other day. Someone had asked for people’s experiences using fuelling when running marathons, and lots of people chimed in. If you were a new marathoner and hadn’t contributed, you wouldn’t get notifications of new posts. But by saving the post, you could return to it to see what information the experienced runners had shared.

I’m sure you can think of lots of reasons why you might want to save a post, from saving photos of someone’s wedding to a link to a dog you’d like to adopt that you want to share with someone else later. Here’s how you do it.

How do I save a post on Facebook?

To save a post on Facebook, click on the down arrow in the top right hand corner of the post:

Note that this arrow (or chevron) will take the form of an ellipsis (…) on your mobile device.

When the dialogue box drops down, you can choose Save post by clicking on it:

Click on Save post and you will see a confirmation:

This also gives you a quick route to see your saved items.

How do I stop saving a post on Facebook?

Once you have saved a post, clicking on the down arrow again will give the new option, Unsave post:

If you click this, just this post will disappear from your saved posts list.

How do I find my saved Facebook posts?

If you have just saved a post, you can click on See saved items to view all of your saved posts (see above under How do I save a post on Facebook?)

To view your saved items, go to your Home screen (not your own timeline, but Home) and look at the menu on the left-hand side. Below your shortcuts, under Explore, is a new Saved section, with the number of saved posts next to it (this only appears when you have saved at least one post):

Click on Saved and you’ll be taken to a list of your saved posts, the most recent first:

This article has shared how to save a Facebook post, as well as how to un-save it and how to view your saved Facebook posts. If you have found this interesting and useful, please do share it using the buttons below, or leave a comment.

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This article on how to cancel a Facebook event follows on from How Do I Create A Facebook Event? and other posts on Facebook events you can find links to below.

Why would I want to cancel a Facebook event?

There are as many reasons why you need to cancel a Facebook event as there are reasons why you would cancel the event itself. If you want to remove an event from Facebook (and tell the attendees it is cancelled), this article explains how.

How do I cancel my Facebook event?

You will find the button for cancelling an event when you Edit the event. Click on the Edit button on the right-hand side of the screen:

Right down at the bottom, you will see Cancel Event: click on the words:

This is the Confirm Cancellation screen. You will see a few options:

You can choose between two options and an extra bonus option:

• If you choose to Cancel Event, Facebook will tell the guests that it has been cancelled, but people can still post on the event. Click the radio button next to this option to select it.
• If you chose Cancel Event, you can also add a post to the event with the reason for cancelling in your own words: just type in the free-text box.
• If you choose to Delete Event, Facebook will tell the guests that it has been cancelled, and then the event and everything everyone has posted in the event will disappear

Once you have chosen your option, click the Confirm button to confirm the cancellation. Clicking Cancel will cancel the cancellation – the event won’t be cancelled. Confusing, I know. So confirm the cancellation unless you’ve changed your mind.

If you have cancelled – rather than deleted – the event, it will still appear in your Events feed, but it shows clearly that it’s cancelled. People can still post messages, which can be useful. You can’t edit it any further.

This article has explained how to cancel your Facebook event.

Related posts on this blog

How Do I Create A Facebook Event?

How Do I Communicate With The People Attending My Facebook Event?

How Do I Change The Time Of My Facebook Event?

All articles about Facebook

This article on how to change the time of my Facebook event follows on from How Do I Create A Facebook Event? and How Do I Communicate With The People Attending My Facebook Event? and actually covers the question I asked in the first place when I had created a Facebook event but needed to change the time.

Why is it so hard to change the time of a Facebook event?

It isn’t actually difficult at all to change the time of your event, however it is not obvious or intuitive. We’re used to getting drop-down menus or calendars or options when we try to edit an event in a calendar, but Facebook (currently) does it a bit differently.

How do you edit a Facebook event?

Once you have set up an event, you can edit it at any time by clicking the Edit button on the right of the screen:

This takes you into the edit screen. Here you can add a photo, change the name, add a location and change the date and time.

Here’s the confusing part. If you want to change the date, click on the calendar icon and a calendar sheet will come up where you can select the date:

However, when you click on the time, all you will get is the hour or minute section highlighted. Nothing to drop down, no arrows, no clock. This has confused many people.

However, all you need to do is click on that highlight and use your number keypad or top row numbers to type in your new number. If you want it to read 8:30, start by highlighting the hour and typing 8.

It’s not completely simple, though. Once you get to the minutes, the numbers move along the field like the numbers on a till – so if you highlight :00 and press the 3 key, this will happen:

and you actually have to type 30 to get it to read 30 and not 03. I don’t know about you, but I expected the cursor to be at the beginning, so you could just type a 3 and get 30.

Anyway, there you go – click Save and there’s your date changed:

This article has explained how to change the time of a Facebook event.

Related posts on this blog

How Do I Create A Facebook Event?

How Do I Communicate With The People Attending My Facebook Event?

How do I cancel a Facebook event?

All articles about Facebook

This article follows on from How Do I Create A Facebook Event? and you should read that one first if you’re starting out on the process. Today we’re talking about how to communicate to the guests who are attending your Facebook event.

How can I get in touch with people attending my Facebook event?

There are two ways to do this: add a post to the event, or message attendees.

Adding a post to the event

Once you’ve created an event, when you go into the event page, you will find that it looks quite like a normal Facebook newsfeed. On the left-hand side, you will find an option to Write Post / Add Photo/Video or Create Poll (you can create a poll to find out people’s music or food preferences, for example).

Type your message into the text box and hit Post and your message will be visible on the event page.

You can use the drop-down arrow that appears in the top right to “pin” your post to the top of the event newsfeed if it’s important.

Who will see this message? Anyone who visits the event page and people whose notification settings are set to send them posts in events they’re attending.

Where will you see replies? Anyone can reply to your post and all comments will be visible to everyone who is invited to a private event or who looks at a public event.

Messaging your guests

There is also an option to send a Facebook Message to your guests.

On the right-hand side, under the list of guests who are attending, you will find a Message Guests link:

When you click on the link, you have the option to select the group of people who are going, those who have replied maybe and those you have invited but who haven’t responded. So this is a good way to remind people to reply, as well as to send messages onto to those people who are attending.

Write your message at the bottom of the screen, tick Send as group message and press Send, just like you would when using a standard Facebook Message.

Who will see this message? Only the people in the particular group you’ve selected, so it’s useful if you want to tell people something without telling the whole world, or chivvy along invitees who haven’t yet responded.

Where will you see replies? Replies will appear in the Facebook Messenger session that you’ve set up by doing this.

This article has explained how to get in touch with people attending your Facebook event.

Related posts on this blog

How Do I Create A Facebook Event?

How do I change the time of my Facebook event?

How do I cancel a Facebook event?

All articles about Facebook

This article explains how to set up a Facebook event, whether that’s for a work event, a birthday party or any other event you want to invite people to via Facebook.

Please note that all these instructions are for using a desktop computer, however you should be able to use your phone or tablet to use the app in the same way.

Why set up a Facebook event?

If you’re anything like me, most of your friends are on Facebook. Facebook gives you an easy way to set up events, invite people, know who’s coming and message people about the event.

How do I set up a Facebook event?

First of all you need to access the Events area. This is on your Facebook feed screen, under your shortcuts:

Click on Events and you’ll find all the events you’re currently signed up to attend, plus a button to allow you to create a new one:

Click on Create Event to create your event. You will then have a choice: you can create a Private Event, which will be invisible to people unless you invite them (good for a party) or a Public Event that anyone can see and join up to (good if you’re promoting a charity event or running a public race, etc.). In this case, we’re clicking on Create Private Event.

Once you’ve clicked on Create Private Event, you can set up your event details:

Here you can add a photo, add a location (Facebook allows you to choose from locations that already exist or you can just write in whatever you want to) and importantly add the date (click on the calendar, choose the date) and time (overtype the time).

Decide whether you want guests to be able to invite their own friends (useful if you’re not Facebook friends with someone you want to invite but someone you know is) and then click Create Private Event.

Your event is created. Now it’s time to invite some people. Click the Invite button:

Now you can choose to invite Facebook friends or add email addresses (I’m not sure how this works as I’ve never done it – please comment below if you have!).

I chose Invite Facebook friends – I then get a list of all my friends and also handy groups of friends or attendees of previous events:

Click on the button by the name to invite someone (the list will change if you select the groups of people on the left) and click Send Invites when you’ve finished.

This will then send invitations to all guests. How they receive these depends on how they have set their notifications, by the way.

How do I know who is attending my event?

If you want to look at or edit your event, go back into that Events area and your event will be in the listing:

Click on the event to see who’s going:

Here I can see that two people are going, and their faces appear in the right hand area.

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This article has explained how to set up a Facebook event, invite people and see who is attending. I have continued to write about editing, communicating with attendees and deleting events.

Related posts on this blog

How do I communicate with the attendees of my Facebook event?

How do I change the time of my Facebook event?

How do I cancel a Facebook event?

This is a companion piece to the article I published last week on how you can stop your posts in a public Facebook group appearing in your friends’ newsfeeds (hint: you can’t). That post explained the different kinds of Facebook group and how much you post in each kind is visible to the outside world.

This article looks at the situation from the other side: how do you hide the posts that your friend makes in a Facebook group or on a Facebook page that you’re really not interested in.

What’s the problem?

Say your friend has just joined a quilting group and all he does is post, post, post in this group about quilts he’s made, ones he wants to make, techniques, meetups etc. And while you love your friend dearly, you really do not want to see all this stuff about quilting, because you’re all about judo and archery. Is there a way to hide this stuff, and the posts he puts on a fan page for a famous quilter? Yes, there is.

How do I hide my friends’s posts on a particular Facebook page or in a group?

When you catch one of the posts in a group you don’t want to see (and this isn’t always easy, as Facebook likes to show you random stuff every now and then, rather than all of everything all the time), you will see a little down-arrow in the top right corner of the post.

Click on the down arrow and you’ll be given some options. Note: this example is for a page, and I don’t really want to stop seeing these posts, it’s just for illustrative purposes …

You can see here that you can hide just this one post, unfollow your actual friend (but stay friends), or hide posts from that particular page. This message is the same whether you’ve Liked the page yourself or not, but you won’t get the option for a Group you’re a member of.

Click on “Hide all from … [group name / page name] and you won’t see posts from that source again.

Note that there’s no way for your friend to stop their posts in a public Facebook group appearing on your newsfeed (see the link at the top of this article for why), so if you don’t want to see them, this is the way to stop seeing them.

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I hope you’ve found this useful – do feel free to share it on social media or email using the buttons below.

Other useful posts on this blog

How to stop your posts in a public Facebook group appearing in your friends’ newsfeeds

Facebook for business

How to delete posts and block users from your Facebook page

How to add a moderator or admin to your Facebook page

How do I stop videos auto-playing in Facebook and Twitter?

How do I stop seeing new comments on a Facebook post?

How do I hide a Facebook post?

How do I remove a member from a Facebook group?

How do I delete a Facebook group?

This issue came up for me today and I thought it was worth sharing, as I had to go searching around for the answer.

What’s the problem?

You’re a member of a Facebook group discussing, for example, interior decoration. The group is a public or open Facebook group, so even if you have to ask to join and be approved before you can post, the posts are public.

So, you merrily start conversations about sofas and wallpaper, post pictures, create Events and join Events, and respond to other people’s posts.

Nothing appears on your own timeline out in main Facebook.

But your friends who aren’t in the group will see a selection of your posts in that Facebook group, whether or not they’re interested in interior decoration.

Why can my friends see my Facebook group posts?

If the group is a Public or Open group, that means that anyone can see the group, the members of the group and the posts they post.

It’s all down to the group, not to your individual settings. There is no way you can stop this happening (and there are some very cross posts and comments about this all over the Internet).

What are the kinds of Facebook groups?

A Public / Open group – everyone can see who is a member and what they post. You might have to be approved to post in the group or you might not, but everything will still be seen.

This kind of group is intended to be welcoming and visible and isn’t suitable if it’s for discussing private matters.

A Closed group – everyone can see the group name and find the group, but no one who isn’t in the group can see the members and posts. You will need to ask to join this group and need to be approved before you can post.

If you have friends in a private group, you will see their posts in your timelines / newsfeed, and vice versa, but no one else will.

This kind of group is good if you want to be found, but don’t want your discussions all over the whole of Facebook.

A Secret group – no one can see the group name or the members or posts. It’s not searchable, even to find the name of the group. Members have to invite people to join the group.

This kind of group is useful for a support group or private discussion about an event where you know who you want to invite to join the group.

How do I tell what kind of group a Facebook group is?

When you look at the group home page, there will be a note underneath which states what kind of group it is. Here are some examples:

A Public group:

When you hover over Public Group:

A Closed Group:

When you hover over Closed Group:

A Secret Group:

When you hover over Secret Group:

How do I stop my friends seeing all my posts in this Facebook group?

Short answer: if it’s an open group, you can’t.

Your friends can hide the posts from that group using the down-arrow in the corner of one of the posts, but you’d have to instruct all of your friends to do this and I’m sure this is not really feasible.

There is no setting in your profile that can stop your friends seeing the posts.

The only way to make sure that no one except friends who are also in the group can see your group posts is to change the group setting to Closed. Obviously, a moderator will need to do this, if you’re not the moderator.

—

I hope you’ve found this useful – do feel free to share it on social media or email using the buttons below.

Other useful posts on this blog

Facebook for business

How to delete posts and block users from your Facebook page

How to add a moderator or admin to your Facebook page

How do I stop videos auto-playing in Facebook and Twitter?

How do I stop seeing new comments on a Facebook post?

How do I hide a Facebook post?

How do I remove a member from a Facebook group?

How do I delete a Facebook group?

Today I’m going to share with you how to hide a single Facebook post, and control what you see and when.

Why would I want to hide a Facebook post?

I usually want to hide a Facebook post if the post itself upsets me in some way, or presents a spoiler on something, but I don’t want to unfriend or unfollow the person who posted it. A personal example is when people post pictures of cruelty to animals or people, something I really don’t want to see scrolling through. Or a picture of a spider.

Note: if you just want to stop getting notifications on a post in your email, but not hide it from your timeline, follow these instructions.

How do I hide Facebook posts in my timeline?

If you want to hide a post …

First, find and press the little down-arrow in the top right-hand corner of the post:

This will give you a menu of things you can do:

You can see here that you can Hide the post. Facebook will confirm when you’ve done this.

How do I hide my own Facebook post?

I’m not sure why you would want to do this, but if you want to hide one of your own posts, you get more options when you click that down-arrow:

How do I hide Facebook posts in a Group?

If you are a member of a Facebook Group but choose not to have it come up in your timeline (for example, if you’re in a photo-a-day group and would end up with 80 posts a day in your Facebook timeline), you CANNOT HIDE A POST.

How annoying is that! But you can at least turn off the notifications – see this post for instructions.

This post has shown you how to hide posts from your Facebook timeline, on your own posts but not in Groups. You can find more on social media in the Resource Guide or by using the Search box in the right-hand column.

If you’ve found this post useful, please share it using the buttons underneath!

Today I’m going to share with you how to turn off notifications for a single Facebook post, and control what you see and when.

Use these instructions if Facebook usually notifies you with an email when there’s a new comment on a post by somebody.

Why would I want to turn off notifications on a Facebook post?

Sometimes you want to post a comment on a Facebook post but you don’t want to see all of the replies and comments that come after it. Why might this be? Here are some examples …

• Your friend has had a good (or bad) event in their life and posted about it, and you want to post a message of congratulations or support but you know about a million other people are going to post a similar comment and you don’t want lots of emails flooding your mailbox.
• You’ve entered a competition by commenting on a business’s post but you don’t want to see all the other entries.
• You’ve commented on a news item someone’s shared but it’s quite upsetting and you don’t want to be reminded of it every time someone else comments.

These instructions work for posts in either your main timeline or a Facebook group, but they look slightly different so I’ve broken it down into two sections.

So, how do I prevent Facebook from emailing me every time there’s a comment, if I don’t want to change my whole Facebook alerts settings?

How do I turn off Facebook notifications in a post on my timeline?

If you want to keep a post available in your timeline (i.e. you don’t want to hide it) but you don’t want to get notifications of further comments on the post once you’ve commented, here is how to Stop notifications.

First, find and press the little down-arrow in the top right-hand corner of the post:

This will give you a menu of things you can do:

You can see here that you can also Hide the post or unfollow the person who posted it. But we want to click on Turn off notifications at the bottom of the list.

Now Facebook will confirm what you’ve done:

This is useful, as you can click Turn On Notifications if you did this by mistake.

If you want to turn your notifications back on at any time (so that you receive an email every time someone else comments), go and find the post, click on the down-arrow and choose Turn on notifications:

Now you will receive an email every time someone comments on the post.

How do I turn off Facebook notifications on my own post?

Of course this is slightly different – if you want to turn off notifications on one of your own posts, you get more options when you click that down-arrow:

How do I turn off Facebook notifications in a Group?

If you are a member of a Facebook Group but choose not to have it come up in your timeline (for example, if you’re in a photo-a-day group and would end up with 80 posts a day in your Facebook timeline), there’s a slightly different way to turn off notifications.

In this example, a friend has posted about the Great British Bake-Off and another friend has mentioned, and tagged me in their comment, that I haven’t seen it yet and will be watching it tomorrow. I don’t want to see any more comments in case someone lets slip who’s left the competition.

Click on the little down-arrow in the top right corner of the post …

This will bring up a menu. Here you can also report a post as spam if you need to – but we’re going to concentrate on turning off the notifications. You do that by clicking on Turn off notifications:

Once you’ve done that, you’ll see a message above the post telling you that you will no longer get notifications about this post. This means that whenever anyone comments on the post, you won’t get an email telling you that this has happened.

Note that you will also see a clickable link allowing you to Turn On Notifications – which is very useful if you’ve done this by accident. You can click Turn On Notifications to make sure you still get comments emailed to you:

If you want to turn notifications back on for a post, go and find the post (you haven’t hidden it, so it will still be in your timeline or the group it was posted in). Click on the down-arrow again and choose Turn on notifications:

Now you will receive an email every time someone comments on the post.

This post has shown you how to turn off notifications in your Facebook timeline, on your own posts and in Groups. You can find more on social media in the Resource Guide or by using the Search box in the right-hand column.

If you’ve found this post useful, please share it using the buttons underneath!