How To Download Your Official Twitter Archive (And See Your Very First Tweet)

Back in December Twitter began rolling out its long-awaited Twitter archive feature, which allows users to download a complete index of every tweet they've ever sent from their profile (including retweets), going all the way back to the day that they joined. It's taken a while but the feature has now rolled out to all users, and in this article we'll show you how to download your Twitter archive and what you need to do to view it. First, login to Twitter.com and go to your Settings page. Make sure that you're in the Account part of your settings, then scroll down and you’ll see a section called Your Twitter archive and a button that allows you to request the archive. Warning: Before you go any further it's important that you check that the email address that is connected to your Twitter account is in use and accessible by you. You will need this to retrieve your archive, as Twitter sends this via an emailed link. Your Twitter Profile email address is also stored in the Account section of your Settings. If this is incorrect, change your email now before requesting the archive download. Now, click on the Request your archive button. Twitter will notify you that they're received your request, and that a link will be emailed to you when your download is ready. This typically takes a few minutes to arrive, but is largely dependent on the size of your archive. Once you have the email (if you don't see it about 15 minutes or so, check your junk mail), open it and you'll see further instructions, including a Go now button. Click on the button. You'll be taken to Twitter.com and presented with a Download button to retrieve your archive. This will be saved to your computer as a file called tweets.zip. Unzip the file and then double-click on the index.html file inside to view your Twitter archive, which will open in your default web browser. When you first open your archive it will display your latest tweets first from the current month (or the most recent month that you last updated). Scroll down to view all the tweets from this month in reverse-chronological order. On the right-hand side is a breakdown of the volume of your tweets on a month-by-month basis, displayed in reverse-chronological order, by year. Mouseover any of the coloured columns to see the total tweets for that calendar month, and click on a column to see the tweets for that month, which will display in the pane on the left. Click on the very first column in your earliest year to see your very first tweet (you may have to scroll down to the bottom). You can re-access your Twitter archive at any time by re-opening the index.html file. However, it won't update to display any tweets you have published since you retrieved the download. You will need to re-request your archive, and this can only be done when the Request your archive button re-appears in the Accounts section of your Twitter Profile Settings.

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How To Download Your Official Twitter Archive (And See Your Very First Tweet)

Shea Bennett

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Shea Bennett