Why can we only comment as our deleted Facebook page?

April 24, 2013 4:06 AM

At my work place, we had two Facebook Pages. We made Old Page inactive/unpublished, and deleted it a couple of weeks ago. We now only use New Page. However, when we want to comment on other pages, it is the icon from Old Page that shows up. Help!

The creation of Old Page was a spur of the moment thing, while New Page is more official. When we marked Old Page for deletion, we went through the waiting period, and then deleted Old Page completely.

Today for the first time, we commented on another page, and noticed that it was the icon from Old Page that showed up next to the comment box. We couldn't see an option to change who we comment as, and I thought that maybe by submitting the comment, Facebook would realise we only have New Page - but it didn't. Now it turns out that we're the only ones who can see that comment! When we log out of Facebook, we can't see the comment anymore.

What is going on? Haven't we deleted Old Page permanently? How can we make sure that we always comment as New Page, so our comments are visible?

Thanks!

posted by rawrberry to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

Typically if you click on the settings "cog" in the upper right hand corner of the page*, you get an option to "Use Facebook as" and then you can pick the page you want to comment as.


* I see My name, "Find Friends," "Home," the privacy icon, and then the settings cog in the top blue bar at the right of my screen. It's the settings cog you want.
posted by Kimberly at 4:21 AM on April 24, 2013

Kimberly has it - you can change who you are using FB as via that setting.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 4:23 AM on April 24, 2013

Response by poster: I haven't got a Settings cog. I am not logged into my personal profile; I am logged directly into the company New Page.

There is a "Use Facebook as..." option under Edit Page in the Admin Panel. But as far as I can tell, it doesn't make a difference: I clicked to use Facebook as New Page, then went to the other page we commented on and updated it (F5) but it still shows the Old Page icon by the comment box.
posted by rawrberry at 4:34 AM on April 24, 2013

That's interesting - I'm not able to log into Facebook as a page, I can only log into my profile and then switch to representing the pages I'm admin for as necessary. Perhaps you are encountering a bug in the system.
posted by Kimberly at 5:55 AM on April 24, 2013

Response by poster: Thanks Kimberly, we got our comment through!

I logged in as myself, and then did the cog -> use Facebook as... trick, and it worked.

I'm still wondering why we commented as Old Page in the first place, though.
posted by rawrberry at 6:04 AM on April 24, 2013

For future reference, if you are moving from Old Page to New Page, Facebook has a merge feature where you can merge the two pages (the New Page has to have more Likes than the Old Page, and they have to be pretty similar in name, location etc.). That way, you don't lose the Likes from Old Page that didn't move over, and you avoid the icon confusion issue (whatever caused it).
posted by beagle at 6:09 AM on April 24, 2013 [2 favorites]

I'm still wondering why we commented as Old Page in the first place, though.

Cookies.
posted by dhartung at 2:56 AM on April 25, 2013

Response by poster: I just tried deleting all cookies, temporary files etc. but it makes no difference.

Keep the ideas coming!
posted by rawrberry at 5:06 AM on April 25, 2013

I would say it's a bug. But Facebook has no known way to submit a support ticket. I would post it to the Support Forum via links here. You never know, somebody might have an answer. Other than that, I would connect your page to a personal account and just manage it that way. That's the way 99.999% of Pages are managed, so it works better.
posted by beagle at 2:35 PM on April 25, 2013