Anya Zhukova · March 24, 2021 · 6 min read Facebook is a great tool for finding people online. It’s still a very popular platform, and chances are you can find both your colleague from work and that girl you sat next to in primary school there.
Once you find and collect all of your connections in your friends list on Facebook though it might get difficult to remember everyone you have there. When that happens, Facebook has a pretty useful system of filters that you can use to search your friends list for one specific person.
How to Search Your Facebook Friends by Name
The main option that most people use when searching for someone in their Facebook friends list is searching by name. If you know the name of the person you’re looking for, follow the simple steps below to find them in your Facebook friends.
- Open Facebook and go to your profile page.
- Select Friends from the menu.
- Type the name of your friend into the Search box.
You’ll see all of the matching profiles appear on the list below. Hover the cursor over the friend’s name to see the options to contact them or view their profile.
How to Search Facebook Friends by Job or School
It gets more difficult if you don’t remember the name of the person you’re looking for. In that case, you can use Facebook’s search filters to find a person in your friends list.
If you and the person you’re looking for worked in the same establishment, you can search for them using the Work filter. To do that, follow the path your Profile page > Friends, only this time select Work from the menu. You’ll then see a list of all of your colleagues from your workplace.
Note that in order to use this filter you have to have your workplace listed on your Facebook profile. Under Work you’ll find the people from your friends list who also have the same organization listed as their place of work.
Another filter that you can use to search your Facebook friends is University. You can find the people that you went to the same school with by following the path Profile page > Friends > University. Once again, the list will show you the people that have the same college or university listed on their profile that you do.
How to Search Your Facebook Friends by Birthdays
One handy filter that Facebook offers to its users is Birthdays. If you’re not sure when your friend’s birthday is, you can use it to stay on top of all of your friends’ birthday dates.
To see your friends’ upcoming birthdays, open your Facebook friends list and select Birthdays. You’ll see a list of people who have their birthdays coming up in the next few days. Add them to your calendar if you don’t want to forget to send your wishes, or use Facebook’s notifications bar to get birthday reminders.
How to Find Someone Using Your Friends’ Friends
What if the person you’re looking for on Facebook unfriended you or isn’t on your friends list for some other reason? In that case, you can still use Facebook to locate their profile and contact them. Here are a few ways to do it.
You can use one of your Facebook friends to find someone who’s not in your friends list but has something to do with this person. Maybe they work or study together, or live in the same city. There are two ways to search for someone using your friends’ friends.
- If you know the name of the person you’re looking for, you can use the Friends of friends filter to find them on Facebook. Open Facebook and type the name of the person into the Search box. Under Filters, select People > Friends of friends. You’ll see a list of people with the same name that you have mutual friends with.
- If you’re not sure about the exact name of the person, you can use the People You May Know page to find them. Open Facebook and select Friends from the menu on the left. Under People You May Know you’ll see a list of people that you have mutual friends with. Scroll down and see if you can find the person you’ve been looking for.
Other Ways to Search for Someone Who’s Not in Your Friends List
If you didn’t manage to find a person using your friends’ friends, there are other ways to search for them. One of them is to look for the person in Facebook Groups. When you know that someone’s interested in a specific field or topic, you can browse the related public groups and search for that person among the members.
To do that, open Facebook and select Groups from the menu on the left. Then type the name of the group into the Search groups box. Select the right group from the list and then select Members to browse through the group’s participants.
Note that you’ll only be able to see the members of Facebook groups that are set to Public. If you want to browse the members list of a closed group, you’ll have to first join the group.
Another way to search for someone on Facebook is by using their handle or username from another social media platform, like Twitter or Instagram. People often use the same usernames across multiple sites and platforms.
Every Facebook profile has a unique username at the end of its URL. You can see yours when you open your profile page – it’s what goes after www.facebook.com/. Try and use the person’s username from a different site in their Facebook URL and see if you land on their profile page.
Use Facebook to Quickly Locate Someone
With all the different filters and search options, Facebook makes the process of finding someone online extremely easy and quick. More than that, now you can use Facebook Messenger to locate someone offline as well. A useful feature when you need to pinpoint someone’s location to discuss things in person, to pick them up, or see if they’re in the neighborhood.
How do you search for people on Facebook? Do you use one of the methods covered in this piece, or did we miss anything? Share your experience with Facebook search in the comments section below.
