How to Extract Data from Facebook
Thursday, March 31, 2016 10:23 PM
Step 1. Download Octoparse and install it. Register a new account at www.octoparse.com. Or directly click the “Sign up” option the Login interface.
Step 2. Advanced Mode: Click “start”to build a new task./ Hit the “Quick start” button in Navigation Panel to create a new task .
Step 3. Complete basic information. ➜ Click “Next”.
Step 4. Design Workflow to configure the extraction rule. You can check your configuration rule in Workflow Designer here if something goes wrong.
Step 5: Sign in your account in the build-in browser.
1) Click the first textbox and select “Enter text value”.
2) Type in your account in the input box under “Customize Current Action”.➜ Click “save” button.
3) Then click the second textbox and select “Enter text value”. ➜ Type in your password. ➜ Then click “save”.
4) Click on “Log in” button. ➜ Choose “Click an item”.
Now you’ve logged in your Facebook in the build-in browser.
Step 6. Click the group which you want to extract data from. ➜ Choose “Click an item”. (Check out Workflow Designer. When a “Click Item” action has been created, it would open the link you choose to click. )
Step 7. Click on “Members”. ➜ Choose “Click a item”.
Step 8. Create a list of items. ( We know that information such as email, address is on “About” page. So we need to get into this link by creating a list of items.) Click on the first detail link. ➜ Click “create a list of item”. ➜ Click “Add current item to the list”.
➜ “Continue to edit the list”. ➜ Click on the second detail link. ➜ "Add current item to the list".
Click on the “Continue to edit the list”.➜ Click on the third one. ➜ "Add current item to the list".
Then “Finish creating list”
Click "loop" to process the list.
Step 9. Now we get into the detail page. But we need the information on “About” page. So click on “About” page link. ➜ Choose “ Click an item”.
Step 10. Extract data. ➜ Click on information you want to extract. ➜ Choose “Extract text”.
Now we are done configuring extraction rule.Once all data fields are created, Click “Next”.
Step 11. You can choose not to load images to speed up the extraction.But sometimes may cause problems on certain websites. ➜ Click “Next”.
Step 12. Now the task is completed! Choose the “Local extraction” to run the task on your computer.
Step 13. The data extracted will be shown in "Data Extracted" pane. Click 
button to export the results to Excel file, databases or other formats and save the file to your computer.
Happy Data Hunting!
Author: The Octoparse Team
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