How To Find Back Old Tweets

Twitter's own account on Twitter

You may have got stuck when you are sure there must be a tweet of you or someone else years ago and you want to find it back. But when you scroll trough the Twitter feed you notice the tweets suddenly stop. Are the tweets removed? Can they be found back? They can!

The Twitter feed is not endless. This is probably to protect the Twitter servers. After maybe a few thousand you cannot see the older tweets. Luckily, there are ways to also view older tweets. In fact, all tweets that were not removed by the user can be found. Here, two methods are given. One thorough method for your own tweets and another method that can be used to find all tweets.

1. Find Your Own Tweets Back

Twitter provides the opportunity to download all your data, including your tweets. With this data you can find and read back all your tweets, from the very first to the last tweet.

1. Go to Twitter Settings

The first step is to log in to your Twitter account if you haven't already. Go to 'Settings' or 'Settings and Privacy' via the 'More' option in the navigation bar. There you select 'Your account'.

2. Archive Request and Password

Click on 'Download an archive of your data'. In the pop-up you have to give your account password. You will have to verify by sending a code to your email address or telephone number. Do this and fill in the number. After this, you can click on 'Request data'.

3. Download and View Data

You will be notified when your archive is ready for download. Follow the given link or go to your account settings and to 'Download data'. Now you can download your data and view all your tweets.

2. Find Back Any Tweet With Advanced Search

You can download your own tweets, but of course you cannot request all the data from other users. So, if you are looking for an old tweet of another user you have to use another approach. Fortunately, this is quite simple. 

1. Go to Search

Just go to the Twitters search section. You can do this by entering a random search query in the search bar. 

2. Go to Advanced Search

At the search page click on the three dots behind the search bar at the top of the page. Click on 'Advanced Search' from the menu.

3. Fill in the Right Information

Now you can give any information you know about the tweets you are looking for. For example, fill in in the name of the account from which you are looking for tweets at 'Accounts' -> 'From these accounts'. Next, fill in the 'From' and 'To' dates. So, if you know it must be a tweet in 2018, you can give the range from January 1 to December 31 of 2018. Or if you only know it must be years back you can give the range from, say, January 1 2010 to December 2020. Now you can click search and you will find the tweets from this period. Click the tab 'Latest' to find it sorted on date. If you still not can find all the tweets you are looking for, you may have chosen a range that is too broad. The simple work-around is to split the date range into multiple searches.

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