Saturday, April 23, 2016

How to Search Facebook Groups

Somethings are just hiding in plain sight, and I'm going to show you one of them. If you belong to a Facebook group and want to search for something you or someone else previously wrote or posted, it can be very difficult to do. Especially in active FB groups. So you create a brand new topic...much to the chagrin of fellow posters and group administrators. As such, I'm going to show to SEARCH for a topic or comment you or someone else posted previously. It's really easy:

(1) On the FB group page there is a "Search this group" field located on the top, right-hand side of the page (and just below the group photo). In this screen-shot below using my Native American Ancestry Explorer FB group (join here), I show you exactly where the "Search this group" field is located (and note there is a magnifying glass icon next to it): 


(2) You can put in a Name, Subject or any identifying words to help the FB group search engine do its job. After you put the information in the "Search this group" field,  several topics that you or others created or where you or others commented with the Name,  Subject or identifying information will come up (Note: for additional scrolling there is a "Show More" button at the top of the page). In the example below, I wanted to search for a previous topic I posted about Southeast Asian admixture showing up in Afro-diasporans with Native American ancestry (you can read it here). So I put "Amerindian Southeast Asian" in the search field and it came up as the second topic. As you can see the FB group search engine highlighted Amerindian and Southeast Asian in the places where I and others previously mentioned the two terms: 


(3) Finally in the example below, I entered my name "TL Dixon" in the "Search this group" field to see my and other member's topics or comments showing where my name was previously tagged: 


See I told you it was really easy to do. Be sure to practice using it.

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