Many a time, when you want to take a break from Facebook, you might think about deleting or deactivating the account; later on, you may regret your decision if you lose the data that is stored in the account or will not be able to retrieve the account at all. This happens when you do not have complete information about how deletion and deactivation of Facebook account works and how they are different from each other.
It is important that you should have information about it, however, there is no need to worry about it, many people generally do not have this depth of knowledge about this topic. Therefore, in this article, an informative guide has been provided for the readers, where they can know the difference between deletion and deactivation, and how they can recover their deleted Facebook account.
Steps to recover deleted Facebook account
You need to understand that there is a difference between deactivation and deletion of an account. The steps mentioned in this section associate with the recovery of deleted Facebook accounts and not with the recovery of deactivated accounts. If you read through the article, you will get to know the difference between the two in the next section.
Now, without talking much, let’s see how you can recover your deleted Facebook account:
- First, go to the Facebook login page.
- Enter your email address or phone number, using which you usually login into your FB account.
- Then, enter your password in the next text field.
- Click on the login button.
- Thereafter, you will see a message, stating that ‘Your account is in the process of deletion, it will be deleted after 30 days of requesting the deletion. If you want to retrieve your account and the information contained within it, click Cancel Deletion’. Therefore, to prevent your account from deletion, click on the Cancel Deletion button.
After following the above steps as stated, you will enter your Facebook account as soon as you click on the Cancel Deletion button and will be able to use it as you usually did.
Also, if you do not remember your email address or password to log in to Facebook so that you can recover your account, then you can click on the Forgot Password link on the login page to change the password.
Notes
It is important to bring to your notice that you will be able to recover your permanently deleted Facebook account only within 30 days of requesting the deletion. After 30 days your account will get deleted, all your data will be lost, and will not be able to recover in the future.
How is deleting an account different from deactivating a Facebook account?
Deactivating Facebook Account
- When you deactivate an account, you can reactivate it whenever you want.
- People on Facebook will not be able to see your timeline.
- Your Facebook account will not be shown in search results whenever someone searches for your account.
- You will no longer remain logged in, in the apps or services in which you have accessed using your Facebook account.
- When you recover your account, all your data (contacts, chats, photos, videos, etc.) will also be recovered and no loss of data will take place.
- Pages that you have made on Facebook will also get deactivated, and you will no longer be able to access your page. Moreover, people following your page will not be able to find it and no longer remains part of it. If you do not want your page to be deactivated, then you can provide its full access to someone else before deactivating your account.
Deleting Facebook Account
- Permanent deletion of your account takes place after a few days from the day when the deletion is requested. Within this period, if you log in back to your account using your correct login credentials, then your account deletion request will be canceled.
- After the completion of the process of deleting your account, you will not be able to recover it and all your data (profile, photos, posts, videos, etc.) stored in your Facebook account will be lost.
- You will also lose access to Facebook Messenger.
- People on Facebook will not be able to find your account in Facebook searches after permanent deletion.
- Your friends will be able to see the messages you have sent them. This is so because, your messages data don’t get stored in your Facebook account and therefore, won’t be deleted.
- You will lose access to all the accounts in which you have logged in using your Facebook account and also, all your information stored in those accounts may also get deleted.
- Pages on Facebook that you have made will also undergo deletion, moreover, neither you nor the people following the page will be able to access or find the page and will no longer remain part of it. If you do not want your page to be deleted, then you have to give its access to someone else before deleting your account.
Which is preferred, deletion or deactivation?
After going through the above points you must be clear about the fact that after permanently deleting your account, instead of temporarily deactivating, you will lose all your Facebook data and will not be able to regain access to it; if you failed to recover your account within the stipulated time of 30 days.
On the other hand, deactivation is similar to deletion, but the difference is you will be able to recover your account at any later stage of time. Moreover, all your data, contacts, and other information present in your account will remain intact and will not be lost.
Thereby, you are advised to deactivate your account rather than deleting it so that in the future, if you change your mind, you can recover your account.
How to recover a deactivated Facebook account?
You can recover a deactivated Facebook account at any point of time in the future. There is no limitation of days within which you have to perform the recovery process, or you will lose all your data.
After reactivating your account, you will find your account in the same state in which you deactivated it.
The process of retrieving the deactivated account is the same as that of retrieving a deleted account. You just have to log in to your account using your correct Facebook login credentials, and you will land into your account.
Notes
Please note that you need to remember your email address or phone number and password that you use to do the Facebook login. In case you do not remember your login credentials, then request Facebook support for a new password and go through other ways to reactivate your account from Facebook Help.
Recover an old disabled Facebook account without an email address/phone number or password?
When you remain inactive on your Facebook account for a significant amount of time, you may forget your login credentials due to which you are not able to log in; or it may happen that due to long inactivity you lose access to your account.
In such a situation, you can get a perception that your account has been deleted or deactivated. However, this is not the case you can still recover your disabled Facebook account by following some simple account recovery steps which are listed down here:
- Go to the profile of the account that you want to recover using a desktop browser.
- There, click on the three dots icon that will be present below the cover photo.
- From the menu that appears, select “Find support or report profile”.
- From the further options, click on the “Something else” option and then click Next.
- Now, click on the Recover this account option and follow the instructions on the screen.
FAQ
Ans: No, a Facebook account that has been deactivated and not deleted by the owner of the account, cannot be deleted itself. You can go through the difference between deletion and deactivation of the account given above in the article.
Ans: Your Facebook account will remain deactivated till you retrieve the account by yourself. You can reactivate your account by going through the method given in the article.
However, the deleted Facebook account has to be recovered within 30 days of deletion. After 30 days, you will never be able to recover the account.
Ans: Earlier, when you deleted your account, it took 14 days for the deletion. Nevertheless, due to many requests to recover deleted accounts after 14 days of deletion, the limit has been extended to 30 days. Now, you will be able to recover your deleted Facebook account within 30 days from the day on which you request the account deletion.
Ans: After you have gone through the whole process of account deletion and have confirmed the action, you will be able to recover your account within 30 days. However, after 30 days, there is no way by which you can recover a deleted Facebook account.
Ans: Once you delete your account permanently, you will not be able to recover any photos, posts, videos, your profile, etc. Facebook has clearly mentioned, that any of your information or personal data stirred in your Facebook account will not be recovered; once you have completed the process of permanent deletion (which remain in a pending state for 30 days, in this period you can access your account and save the data in your local device that you do not want to lose.)
