Fixing Facebook Timeline
I was pretty excited about the new Facebook Timeline. Still am. But there were a few minutes last night that I was a bit freaked out.
I used the feature that allows you to see what your Timeline looks like to the public and almost started hyperventilating when it showed EVERYTHING I had posted since I joined Facebook in 2008!
Unacceptable.
I had read that I could fix that by changing the settings for each item.
Did you catch that? Each. Item. No way! Not sure about you, but I don't have time to do that. So I did some more sleuthing and found a way to do it with just a few clicks of the mouse. I figured I wasn't the only person who might freak out about their entire FB history potentially being available to the whole wide world, so I thought I'd walk you through the steps to make your Facebook Timeline private. And just so you know, you can't undo this action unless you go through and change each individual post.
1 - Click the arrow next to Account (in the upper right hand corner).
2 - Select Privacy Settings.
3- Scroll down and click Manage Past Post Visibility.
4 - Click Limit Old Posts.
5 - Click Confirm.
6 - Click Close.
Pretty easy isn't it. Now, you can go back to your Timeline now to check what your profile looks like to the general public. If you're Timeline is like mine, you'll still see polls showing up. From all that I can find, the only way to remove those is to click on the poll and unvote. If you can't figure out how to do that, let me know and I'll show you how. But if you are comfortable with Facebook, then you can probably figure that part out pretty easily.
I hope this helps you feel more comfortable about choosing the Timeline. Ultimately, everyone on Facebook will be converted to it anyway, so you might as well accept it. Or delete your Facebook account.
EDIT: After you make your past posts invisible, make sure your settings are also set to limit the audience for new posts to Friends Only. From the Privacy Settings page, you want to make sure you click the Friends button.
I used the feature that allows you to see what your Timeline looks like to the public and almost started hyperventilating when it showed EVERYTHING I had posted since I joined Facebook in 2008!
Unacceptable.
I had read that I could fix that by changing the settings for each item.
Did you catch that? Each. Item. No way! Not sure about you, but I don't have time to do that. So I did some more sleuthing and found a way to do it with just a few clicks of the mouse. I figured I wasn't the only person who might freak out about their entire FB history potentially being available to the whole wide world, so I thought I'd walk you through the steps to make your Facebook Timeline private. And just so you know, you can't undo this action unless you go through and change each individual post.
How to Make Your Facebook Timeline Private
1 - Click the arrow next to Account (in the upper right hand corner).
2 - Select Privacy Settings.
3- Scroll down and click Manage Past Post Visibility.
4 - Click Limit Old Posts.
5 - Click Confirm.
6 - Click Close.
Pretty easy isn't it. Now, you can go back to your Timeline now to check what your profile looks like to the general public. If you're Timeline is like mine, you'll still see polls showing up. From all that I can find, the only way to remove those is to click on the poll and unvote. If you can't figure out how to do that, let me know and I'll show you how. But if you are comfortable with Facebook, then you can probably figure that part out pretty easily.
I hope this helps you feel more comfortable about choosing the Timeline. Ultimately, everyone on Facebook will be converted to it anyway, so you might as well accept it. Or delete your Facebook account.
EDIT: After you make your past posts invisible, make sure your settings are also set to limit the audience for new posts to Friends Only. From the Privacy Settings page, you want to make sure you click the Friends button.
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