THE JOYS OF MERGING ON FACEBOOK

It should be easy.  It should be simple.  You have a Profile (Personal) page and you’ve maxed out on the 5,000 limit for friends so you want to convert the personal page to a Page.

Well, it’s not simple and it’s not easy—and that’s with someone trained to do it doing it!

The situation:

Personal Page: vickihinze

Maxed out at 5,000.

Nearly 1,000 requests pending (many for nearly a year).

Well over 200 “Subscribers.”

An Existing Page: vicki.hinze.author

About 1870 “Likes.”

Custom Welcome (Landing) page, imported blogs, photos, youtube, and custom New Releases Page.  Groups and favorites and more than a year of posts and videos, photos and a recipe booklet that visitors posted and I compiled of our personal family favorites.

Christians Read Page

Clever Divas Page

Ancient City RWA Page

All three of the above (Christians Read, Clever Divas, and Ancient City) were “linked” to the personal profile page.  Now they’re not linked, and at least right now, I have no search bar to get to them.  I can go into the new Page and click Pages and find them that way.  This is very confusing to me, so I imagine it’s confusing to you too.

Now, let me say up front that none of the “Lost” stuff is “Lost” (except for those on the waiting list to Friend and the Subscribers—all of which are gone) because said trained pro downloaded a copy of everything before we did anything.  Bless her heart!

What’s happened:

I started posting on the Personal Profile page that I was moving.  Did a countdown.  And so it began.

Moving date arrived and the “merge” was started.

I couldn’t get on to facebook.  It’s now a week later and I still can’t sign on in my name.

My personal account went away.  But the merge can’t merge to an existing page.  It creates a new page.  And that creates a whole new set of challenges.

You don’t get to choose which page is Primary and which one merges into which page.  The page with the most likes, which is the new page—the one stripped bare–then becomes the Primary Page.  Other Pages can Merge to it.  But you can’t keep the old Page—the one with all your stuff—as your primary page.

Now when the personal account becomes a page, all the posts are lost.  Friends are transferred.  All the other stuff is gone.  Okay, I thought, this is fine because I’ve more or less had to double post to personal profile page and the vicki.hinze.author page.  So the important things will still be on that Page.

Oops.  Not going to happen that way.  You see, when you convert a personal page with more Friends (4,700—all the others, including the 1,000 waiting and the 200 + subscribers, are lost) than your existing Page has Likes (about 1870), you can only merge the existing Page—the one with 1870—into the new Page—the 4700.  So now all the posts and photos and blog posts and everything posted in the old page will be lost, too.

For that reason, the two pages haven’t yet been merged together.  At least, not as of this morning.  But when they are, then all those things on the old page will disappear as they did from the personal profile page.

Confused yet?  Don’t worry, I’m plenty confused for all of us!

The Likes will move over.  The custom pages and all the posts, photos and such will not.

I see no way for anyone to send messages to me on the new page.

I see no notifications, so everyone’s either taking a really long nap, or some setting is skewed for some reason, or something is going on I’ve yet to figure out.

I’ve gotten instructions to add back apps that I used and the pro redid my welcome and new release pages (the old way is gone, so she had to seek and find a new way), and I’ve managed to add back two apps so far.  In an hour and a half.  (It’s finding the apps for pages that is hard.  There’s no little button or home page to take you to them–or it’s hiding from me.)

Maybe all this stuff makes sense for those who work with it everyday.  It sure doesn’t make sense to this user.  It’s been a frustrating week and the thing isn’t yet resolved. The objective was to get everyone and everything in one place.   I still have two pages, I can’t be found in simple searches, it keeps telling me I don’t exist as a FB user, and frankly, I’m ready to make that fiction fact.  Such a waste of time this.  But I happen to enjoy visiting with friends and folks and for them, I’m hanging in there.  Sooner or later it’ll work, right?

(Hint:  say right.  My sanity depends on it.)

I realize there are fine minds that engineer and develop all this stuff, but I wonder if being so proficient at this stuff hasn’t become a bit of a liability in thinking simply.

Here’s a thought.

Why not put a little button up at the top of a person’s personal profile and/or page.  Two little checkmark boxes.  Personal Profile  Professional Page.  Choose one.

And there, it’d be done.  Nothing lost.  Nothing moved.  No angst. No aggravation. No crazymakers for users, the pros who help users, or Facebook support.

If you check personal profile, then only those options come up.

If you check Professional Page, then those additional specific options come up.

Change one to the other and what’s revealed changes.  Nothing MOVES.  It’s all THERE and in place.

One click and you’re done.   What shows on the page is what you want on the page.  And all those friends waiting and subscribers don’t think you’re a jerk for dropping them and they can find you—as can those you merged over, which isn’t happening right now…

So I sit here wondering how much longer this will be a royal pain, and how much more time it will eat.

And I wonder why that little checkbox idea wouldn’t work.  What is the advantage or necessity of making something that should be easy so difficult?

Now, in fairness, let me say that if I had not had an existing page, the personal profile could have been merged to a new page.  You still lose those waiting, the subscribers, the posts, the photos, the videos, the apps.  People transfer and your profile photo.  That’s it.

But I would have avoided the necessity of merging pages, and the limitation on merging them.  The new bigger one is mandated Primary and you can only merge to it.

But I have those 1870 friends there that I wouldn’t have had.  And we’ve had some great conversations and shared a lot of terrific things.  I’d have missed all that.

So when the merge is done, the old page, along with all those things on it, will go away.  The old personal profile, along with all those things will go away.  On the new page (which is Vicki Hinze [I think that name stays!]) we’ll add back what we can and begin again.

Often we want fresh starts.  I have to say, this isn’t one of those times.  But it’s happening anyway, so we’ll just make lemonade. 🙂

And if Tigerseyemarketing.com weren’t working its proverbial backside off on this, I’d be in a padded room somewhere.  But, bless ‘em, they are, and so for that I’m grateful.  The rest is stuff we’ll work out or through.

Now someone, quick, tell me we’ll be better off for it!

(Note:  if not, this is NOT the time to say so.)

Blessings,

Vicki

P.S.  Facebook Addresses

The old http://www.facebook.com/vickihinze  is gone.

The old http://www.facebook.com/vicki.hinze.author either is gone or will be gone in short order.

The New Page https://www.facebook.com/pages/Vicki-Hinze/197809543636310

(which will be renamed to just the name ASAP) is where you can find me right now and from what I’m told, even if it’s shortened to just the name, it’ll bring you along!  (Now isn’t that refreshing!)

As mentioned above, I can’t get messages right now on there, so if you need anything, email me at infoandrequests(at symbol)aol.com or from  Contact on the www.vickihinze.com site.  (Upper right.)

You can always reach me at vicki(at symbol)vickihinze.com.

And so the joys of merging adventure continues…

UDATE:  It is now three days later and I’m happy to report that I’m merged.  I did lose a lot of likes/friends in the end, but an amazing thing happened.  I didn’t lose my old page!  That means I got to keep my special pages and apps and all the posts that were on it.

I’m not sure how it happened–though I expect between Tigerseye Marketing and Facebook Support there were a lot of people working hard to make a little miracle happen (little to them.  Big to me.) and they somehow managed.  I am elated.

Friends will find me again if they’re supposed to, but what a blessing that they kept my old page.  No reloading apps, searching for new ones because the old ones aren’t there anymore.  No reconstructing special pages.  No running all over the net to change my facebook address and–oh, my.  I’m very happy about this.  By finding a way to do this, Facebook and Tigerseye Marketing has given me back time to do Christmas things I wanted to do but feared I’d have to forfeit.

Maybe it was elves that made this little miracle happen.  Maybe it was Christmas magic…

I can’t say for sure, of course, but I can tell you there is a ton of gratitude floating both to Facebook and to Tigerseye Marketing from this little writer.  She’s smiling–very broadly–this fine morning.

And she’s keeping an eye out for that man in the red suit.  When things that “can’t happen” do…  Well, he’s got to be around here somewhere…

Blessings,

Vicki