Facebook Pages are managed by people’s personal Facebook accounts. A company page cannot have its own account/login. I was really confused about this setup until I understood that a FaceBook company page is only accessed via your or someone’s personal account.
From what I understand, the admin (an FB user account) of the page (an FB business Page) may give another FB user account access to the page, but not a random email that is not associated with an FB account.
Contents:
- If you don’t know who is admin, try guessing.
- If you are admin, see how to give someone else access to your Facebook business Page.
- If you are not a Page admin, see how to request access to your client’s Facebook business Page.
- If you do not see your invitation, see this solution.
- If you were hacked, see these notes.
- If you cannot gain admin access, see this solution.
How to give admin access to your Facebook page.
1. If someone asks for access.
If your client depends on you to know who has access to their Facebook account, such as emailing you when they need to give a new employee access to their own Facebook account, here’s what to do if you already have access yourself:
- Go to your business page.
- Click on the Settings button in the top right corner.
- Click Page Roles.
- Scroll to “Assign a New Page Role” and type in the name or email address associated with their Facebook account.
- Select a role. Default is Editor.
- Click Add.
Troubleshooting
If you can’t find it, the account may be hidden from search or they may not have an FB account with that email address. If hidden from search, they should open it for search temporarily so that the Admin can find them.
Official Facebook instructions: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/187316341316631
2. If an Agency requests access within Facebook.
If an agency requests access, and they tell you to simply respond to their request on Facebook, try these steps:
- Go to your business page.
- Click on the Settings button in the top right corner.
- Click Page Roles.
- Scroll to “Pending Partner Request” and click Respond to request.
- Select Yes.
How to request access to your client’s Facebook page.
1. Find out from your client who has access.
If you need to help your client figure out who has access to their own Facebook business page, look through your emails to see if any of your client’s office staff or marketing department mentioned working on the Facebook account.
Then find out if that person and/or email associated with that person still has access to the Facebook account. Ask them to login to Facebook, and follow the steps above under If someone asks for access.
Find out from your client which email address (personal or business) was the one most likely used for Facebook. Go to “Forgot password?” on Facebook, and type in that email address.
If you have access to the client’s IT, and the email address may be no longer active (i.e. it’s an ex-employee), test that business email address in “Forgot password?” on Facebook. (You can test the email address even if you know the email account is no longer active or usable.) The reason to try this is that FaceBook will show you the email addresses associated with that FB user account. Once you know the email address, you can either re-activate that company email address, or try to reach out to the email address that it told you.
2. Message the admin on Facebook.
Alternately, you can login to Facebook and message the admin directly. To do so, follow the steps from Matt Coble on Techwalla:
“Click the “Message” button displayed on the page’s cover photo. Facebook administrators have the option to disallow incoming messages, which is the case if the page has no Message button. If there is no message button, look for the text box to post on the page’s Timeline.”
If your FB personal account or FB Business Page was hacked.
You could try to reach out to DirectFBhelps @ outlook.com, per https://www.facebook.com/help/community/question/?id=1454008321299952
You could file a report per FB’s official info regarding hacked accounts: https://www.facebook.com/help/738660629556925
If that doesn’t work, I suggest building a new FB Business page. Report the old page as duplicate content. You can expect a reply from Facebook for that. (ref.)
Case Study and tips to avoid future hacks: https://jbmediagroupllc.com/blog/facebook-business-page-hijack/
If you cannot gain admin access at all.
If you know the email address that was associated with the admin access, try following this answer step by step: https://www.quora.com/I-lost-access-to-a-business-Facebook-Page-and-there-are-no-other-admins-How-can-I-recover-this-page
If you cannot gain admin access from a current admin of your Facebook business Page, I only know of one solution (reference):
- Build a new FaceBook Business Page. It can be identical to the old one.
- Report the old page as duplicate content.
- Expect a reply from Facebook for your report.
=================
Give someone G+ admin role: Note: Google+ is no longer a social media option.
https://www.portent.com/blog/social-media/add-administrators-to-google-pages.htm
My name is Michelle and we recently took over management for a property in Springfield MO. The property is Called Park East –
https://www.facebook.com/LiveAtParkEast/?epa=SEARCH_BOXThe previous manager was fired and she was the admin of the page. Can you please explain to us how we can get admin rights to the page?
Hmm, Michelle, that’s a tricky one! I assume you don’t want to reach out to the previous manager and ask for access. You could try to message the page on facebook, and ask for access, per the end of my post. You can refer to this post, or pull out the first image I have and give that as a reference.
Did the previous manager have a business email address? (ie. name@liveatparkeast.com) Try to log into Facebook with it, and see if it is associated with an FB account.
You could try having a third-party call the previous manager, such as your web or IT person, and simply ask for access. When I did that, I was able to get in touch with my client’s previous employee on the first phone call, but no other phone calls after that, so maybe be prepared to know what you need on the first attempt to contact.
Let me know how it goes!
We have almost the same problem with my company’s facebook page. The person wasn’t fired, but she created the page in 2012 and then didn’t do anything else with it. She hasn’t worked here in about 8 years. There’s an account using her company email, which is probably used for the company page, but that email was deactivated long ago. Do you think the easiest option for us would be to reactivate her email so we can reset the password and gain access? I’m not sure how this even works; I already manage a couple of pages, and it’s just linked within my own personal facebook account. Can a company page have its own account/login?
Liz, I’m sorry to hear of your trouble!
Yes, I would recommend re-activating her company email address so you can reset the password and gain access.
A company page cannot have its own account/login. I was really confused about that myself for awhile. A FaceBook company page is only accessed via your or someone’s personal account.
So if it’s linked within your own personal FaceBook account, then I would think you already have the access you need, and you don’t need to login via the former employee’s account.
Are you able to post on your company’s FaceBook Page via your personal account? If so, then you have the right access already. (And I think you can post as yourself, or as your Company so that it looks like the posts are coming from the Company and not from you).
In any case, I would also recommend that you setup another personal Facebook account, using your main company’s email address (or dedicated one such as web@yourcompany.com), and have the page link to that account as well. Then at all times, the company has access to their own account in addition to you having access.
I was recently added as an admin on the page of the agency I work for. I keep trying to access the billing invoices for account to payable but when I go to the billing settings it shows that my request for access to the page is pending. I’m an admin so I have tried to give myself access but I don’t see a request to allow this. Please help!!!!
I’ve never heard of billing invoices from FaceBook, sorry. Did you go through my blog post and try the steps?
Hi, I was recently hacked and my personal account was disabled. I tried to appeal for it back but I have got the message back from Facebook saying it has been permanently disabled and there is nothing I can do. I have read their Terms and services and I know I had not done anything to breach their terms.
I am really freaking out right now as I have several business pages that we used daily associated with that account and have no way of accessing them. I was the only one who had admin access to the business pages. Please help!
I’m so sorry to hear about this! I don’t know much about this kind of situation.
I did see here: https://www.facebook.com/help/250563911970368 that there is a short time to regain a deactivated account. Perhaps that is already past for you.
If your personal FaceBook account is completely deleted, you could try to set up a new FaceBook account, using the same email address as your previous one. Then request access via your FaceBook Business page. Perhaps the business page will automatically connect to your new account because of the same address. Just a thought.
Another idea, if you were able to message FaceBook regarding your account, ask them how to regain access to your Business Pages.
Hope you find a way out of this!
S
Hi there, we have recently taken over a pub and there is already a FB page set up for it that was very successful with good reviews and over 3k likes etc. However we do not know the previous owners or how to get in touch with them to get the admin rights to it!
We really don’t want to have to start a new page from scratch when the current one is so established. We have sent the page numerous messages but no-one is getting back to us.
Is there any advice you can give?
Thanks for your help!
Robyn
Hi Robyn! Honestly, it seems odd to me that you recently took over the business and yet do not know the previous owners. I really don’t have any other advice other than the blog post. Try an email address in Lost Password page, as I mentioned above. You would have to guess a company email address. It would be really helpful if FaceBook were easy to reach and to ask them. Let me know if you are able to have success with that.
Sarah
Some of these post are funny.
Well we bought this from them but don’t know the owners. lol my thought is exactly that.
You bought the place but don’t know who you bought it from? lol yea okay
It brought a smile to me, too. One reason I thought of was, perhaps Robyn is an office personnel, rather than the owner himself. Going through management red tape might be more difficult than posing a question here.
Question: I have a social media marketing company. When I take over the admin role for a business Facebook page, and invite other people to “Like” that page, does the invite come from me personally, or does it come from my company name? Looking to grow a business’s page, but if I send invites, I don’t want them associated with me personally.
Hello Karen, Hmm, I don’t know. Guess you could try inviting a friend and see what it looks like from their perspective. Sorry I can’t help much there.
Hello, my step dad owns a company and has asked me to try and regain access to the Facebook page. The previous manager (years ago) created the page so we don’t know the email or password to access the account. Facebook doesn’t seem to have an easy way of getting their help. How do I go about getting access to the Facebook page? Thanks!
Hi Isabelle, you could try to guess the email address, as I mentioned above. The error you get will show you parts of the email address for you to further guess. I would also try to contact the previous manager. Other than that, I don’t know how to help. Sorry!! 🙁
Hi Sarah,
first of all I would like to thank you for the instructive post. We have also a similar problem: Our company agreed with the previous owners to escalate our privileges to admin. So we have one person in the company that he is (along with 2 more people) Business Page admin. When we visit “business.facebook.com” and try to create an Commerce Manager to build a facebook or Instagram shop, we received the following message: “This facebook page can’t be selected because you are not an admin”, while at the same time facebook (Front Page) > Page Roles confirm that I have the admin previllages.” Does it look familiar to you? Do you have something to suggest?
Best,
GEORGE
Hi George, I am not familiar with that case. Maybe try escalating the other people to admins and see if they can do it. I am not familiar with business.facebook.com or a Commerce Manager versus a Business Page admin. So sorry!! 🙁
How can i get access to a facebook page if the person who is assigned as admin is no longer working with the company ? I have only editor access. Is there any way to do it without contacting that person.
I only know of the ways that I outlined in my post.
Thanks, my problem is that I’ve been added as an admin but can’t see any invitation. I’ve liked the page but it makes not difference, no invitation is visible despite that the page owner has added me. Can you suggest anything? Thanks!
Hi Lynn!
Good news for you! Go to this link: https://www.facebook.com/pages/?category=invites
and you should see an invitation there. You probably missed that part of my post. I added a quick link at the top now.
Best wishes!
Sarah
So I am having the same problem but this link isn’t working. The admin says my invite is “pending” but there is no invite anywhere. Is there anything else I can try?
I don’t know. Please post if you do find a solution.
The company I work for recently acquired a new apartment community. We are having a hard time gaining admin access, and it’s been impossible to gain ownership. The previous company said that we were showing as an agency, but I have not had any requests come through. When I go to the business page, I have no access to the settings.
What can I do?
Hi Courtney, Sorry to hear about your trouble! Did you check if perhaps a request shows up when you go to this link? https://www.facebook.com/pages/?category=invites
You could also have them take a screenshot of how and where you are showing as an agency. Are you showing up like a partner request like this?
Let me know if you have a screenshot of what they mean by “you show up as an agency.”
Sarah
Please tell me the admin of this page:-
https://www.facebook.com/pmctroll
Hi Shishir!
If you are requesting my assistance, please submit your request here: https://sarah-moyer.com/prepay.
Thanks,
Sarah
Hi Sarah,
I recently lost access to my business FB page. I still have access to my personal page but not my business page. I’m not sure if I was hacked or how it happened. I can view the page but I don’t have any administrative authority over it. How do I regain admin access to my page? I can not log in and assign a role either because I don’t have access to any of the business settings.
Hmm, that’s sad that you lost access! I don’t have experience with that! Did anyone else have access? They could have removed you.
Sarah
Unfortunately no one else has access either.
Hi Austyn,
You could try to reach out to DirectFBhelps @ outlook.com, per https://www.facebook.com/help/community/question/?id=1454008321299952
Otherwise, I would suggest building a new FB Business page and then for old one: 1. Report the page 2. Report it as duplicated content 3. Expect a reply from facebook.
Or you could file a report here: https://www.facebook.com/help/738660629556925
Sarah
Than you so much Sarah! I really appreciate it!
You’re welcome!
Hi, I am an agency and trying to request access to my client’s FB business page that she just created a few days ago, but when I click on “request access to a page” in my business manager and search for her business name or even put in the URL, nothing comes up. I’m able to search and find her page from my personal FB, just not from within my business manager. Any idea on how to request access?
Hi Alex,
I would suggest trying by email address associated with her FB page, or first requesting access via your personal FB and then your business manager.
Let me know how it goes.
Sarah
Hi Sarah,
I had deleted my fb account by mistakenly instead of deactivating it temporarily it has got deleted permanently.
with that I have lost the access as admin to my page too..
Can I know how to get back my page and the admin role please?
I don’t think you can get your page back. I suggest building a new FB Business page and then for old one “Report” the page, and “Report it as duplicated content.”
Hello, there is a problem
1. I can not create fb account – there is always an error – GraphQL server responded with error 1390008: [object Object].
2. I can not accept admin invitation, I accept it but after refresh it still shows accept button, all over again.
please help me, thanks in advance
Hi Tamar,
1. I’m not familiar with that error. I suggest that you try to search online using the search term: “cannot create Facebook account GraphQL server error 1390008: [object Object]”
2. Have you tried to accept the admin invitation per my solution above?
Hope that helps!
Sarah
Hi Sarah,
Thanks for the good work on this post. The comment section itself is extremely instructive.. Kudos dear
I’m a startup digital marketing agency and i currently manage client’s social media accounts
I recently added a client’s page through my facebook business manager account.
I want to know if i can login through my personal facebook account using the facebook app and be able to access and post on that client’s page.
Hi Christian,
I don’t have experience with the Facebook business manager account. Have you tried logging in through your personal Facebook account using the Facebook app, and if so, were you able to access and post to your client’s page? I’d be curious to know if you were successful, and other readers might be, too!
Also, thanks for the appreciation for the post and comments! Made me smile. 🙂
Sarah
Hello Sarah, I just joined a company, that closed due to COVID; all employees were let go. An investor purchased the assets of the company and we are reestablishing ourselves, with all new employees and ownership. I want to become an Admin for the Facebook page that was created and managed, until earlier this year, when the company closed. Is there a form I can fill out to request this access?
Hi CarrieJo,
I don’t think there is a form to fill out. You must contact the previous Facebook manager. I made several suggestions in my post on how to do that. I recommend that you start there.
Perhaps you can ask the investor if there are any details within the assets purchased that are related to the Facebook account and management. If not, then the only way to become Admin (that I know of) is to contact the one of those previous employees that were let go, and hope that they will work with you. Too bad that Facebook access wasn’t transferred to the investor at the time of sale.
Hope that helps,
Sarah
Thank you, for your reply, Sarah. Unfortunately, access is not available through the previous employees. With that said, I found something about Merging 2 Facebook Pages. I am unclear if you have to meet the 3 criteria or just 2 of the 3 criteria:
1. You’re an admin of both Pages.
2. Your Pages have similar names and represent the same thing.
3. Your Pages have the same address, if they have physical locations.
If I create a new Facebook Page, could I merge the 2 pages, because I meet #2 and #3, criteria?
I suppose you have to meet all 3 criteria for merging. I would suggest building a new Facebook Page and then reporting the old one as duplicated content, in order to delete it.
I am kind of in the same predicament where there is no clear admin or owner and trying to report the page as a duplicate is not an option. Do you know how to confirm ownership of a page that was probably built off my personal FB page circa 2012-ish.
Sarah,
Do personal FB pages have an Admin? How do I find out who the admin is of my personal page https://www.facebook.com/dklibanoff. I have no way to add another party as admin or editor because I cannot see where I have access as an admin myself. BTW, I like your work. I may can use your help in the future for marketing purposes. I am trying to do some reputation marketing on my personal FB page. The company performing this work says they cannot get to the page roles on my personal page because I am not the admin.
Thanks,
Daniel
As I understand it, there are Facebook personal profiles and Facebook business Pages.
For your personal Facebook profile, you have a username and password, which is how you or anyone else can access your personal Facebook area. In this case, there is no Admin, and there is nothing setup for Agency access.
For Facebook business Pages, there are Admins (such as someone’s personal profile), and you can invite agencies and other people’s personal profile accounts/emails as admins (or editors I suppose).
Thanks for the kind comment about my work. I narrowed my niche to WordPress development (theme builds, finding the best plugin solutions, plugin-theme integration, and plugin seamless styling), so marketing would not be something of interest to me. Thanks for thinking of me though.
Hope that helps.
Sarah
Hi,
we have with our Facebook-Page a big problem. We was three admins. One of us was hacked, after then we three was only moderators, and a asian people was admin. This asian people was deleted a few days later. Now our page have only moderators and no admin. You can help us?
Kind regards from Austria
Gerald
Hi Gerald,
Thanks for the greetings from Austria!
Oh, my, that is a very sad situation! Unfortunately, I don’t know of anything more to do, other than what I wrote in my article.
I wish you the best!
Sarah
Hi Sarah, what’s interesting with the admin stuff is a few years ago, I wound up as the admin of a page without the real admin ever having added me! I wasn’t in the list of admins on the page itself, yet I could do everything: reply as her, read her messages, write with her page name on other pages, even kick her off as an admin of her own page! Fortunately I would never mess with someone else’s work; in fact I searched high and low for a way to contact her since, ironically, the one thing I couldn’t do was tell her via Facebook messaging! I wrote it about it in the link that I’ve used for my name in your comment box (since I can’t post it here as WordPress flags it as spam).
It’s such a massive site that there are probably stories like this all over the place. I mentioned it on Twitter not long after and another friend chimed in to say that she got access to a page as well. It may be more common than we think but not many people look at who they can reply as. I thought I’d mention it as a footnote here since it’s yet another (unintended) way of becoming a page admin: through Facebook’s general bugginess!
That’s crazy, Jack! Wow, thanks for sharing.
Sarah, I used to have a Facebook account but deleted it totally last year. I’ve decided to go back on Facebook recently with a new account. I had an old business page under Wallace Music World that I managed on my old account. The page is still active. How do I become an admin for that page from my new account so I can operate it again? I noticed a suggestion of starting a new business page and informing Facebook that my old business page is a duplicate page. Is that the only option?
Thanks!
As far as I know, yes.
Hi Sarah. Thank you for your blog. I’m having an issue starting a FB Shop. When I go to select my Business Page, it says I’m not the admin of the page. When I look at the settings it clearly states I am. Any thoughts or trouble shooting? Iv3 found some FAQs online but nothing resolved. Thanks in advance!
You’re welcome! Unfortunately, I don’t know of any other options. Please post if you found a solution!
Hello, I’m having trouble with connecting my instagram to Facebook because I am not a business admin for that account, unfortunately the business admin account (that had created that page) was deleted so now I am not able to gain assess to it. Is there anything that can be done other than deleting the account and starting from scratch?
Not that I know of.
Hi there
I began a Facebook business page in 2018 and never finished it. Later in that year I created the page I have now, which is a second one.
When I did the second page, I forgot the first page attempt was still floating around, incomplete, with old information which is now outdated.
I recently saw it and wanted to delete it, as it conflicts with my updated page.
I was unable to get in, and told I am not the administrator.
The account ID is still mine, so I am guessing its not a hack
How would I have lost admin status, and how can I get it back? I did the request for admin, thinking it would come to my own email…..it didn’t, so the request has been pending for a long time now
I have no idea.
Hi,
We recently bought a restaurant and the previous owners said that they “added me as admin” on the FB page so that I could go in and take it over. I can contact them if I need to, but am trying to figure it out without doing that. If they added me, how would I then access the page to go in and change the password, delete them, and attach the page to my FB account? Does it even work that way?
Hi Beth,
Did you read my blog post? What password are you thinking to change? I believe that I explained in the first two paragraphs how to access an FB Business Page. If that is not clear, I recommend contacting the previous owners, and asking them how they added you as an admin. Perhaps their answer will give you a clue.
I am an admin trying to add another admin to my page. When I go to page rolls and add it says I have to have a second admin approve but it doesn’t say how. So I asked another admin and on his page it said he could invite her so that was the second invite. It still doesn’t work and we can’t get her on our admin account. Any ideas?
I don’t have any ideas, sorry.