How to Find Someone on Facebook Using an Email Address

This article explains how to search for someone's email address to add them as a friend on Facebook. Instructions apply to Facebook in a web browser and the Facebook app.

How to Search for an Email Address in Facebook's Search Field

If you want to add someone on Facebook, one option is to search for their email address.

1. Navigate to Facebook.com in a web browser or open the app on your mobile device and if necessary, sign into your Facebook account.

2. On the web, type (or copy and paste) the email address of the person you want to find into the Facebook search field at the top of any Facebook page and press the Enter or Return key.

   On the app, tap the magnifying glass at the top of the screen, enter the email address into the search field and tap Go/Search.

   This will only work if the person you're looking for has their email address listed as public in their About info. Many people don't have this listed to maintain their privacy.

3. By default, this search delivers results about anything related to your search—including pages, places, groups and more. Select the People tab to filter out everything except user profiles.

   Facebook will only show you profile results for people who have made their email or contact information public or who already have a connection to you.

4. If you see a matching email address in the search results, select the person's name or profile photo to go to their Facebook profile. You can also click the add friend button if you're sure it's the right person.

   If you can't spot the correct profile in your results, you can try filtering the results if you know other information about this person. On the web, use the filters on the left side to filter by city, education, work or mutual friends. On the app, use the filter buttons in the horizontal menu at the top.

5. Select Add Friend if you want to send them a friend request. 

   If you don't see this button, they might not allow people to send them friend requests without a mutual friend connection. In this case, you might have to select Message to send them a message asking them to send you a friend request first.

Why Look Someone up on Facebook Using Their Email?

Here are three typical reasons why you might want to use someone's email address to find their Facebook profile:

• Their name is so common that it's too difficult to spot it among all the other Facebook users with the same name when you do a name search.
• They haven't listed their full name on their Facebook profile (perhaps using a nickname as a first name or a middle name as their last name).
• They (or you) don't know their Facebook username/URL so you can't use it to go directly to their profile.

Find People to Add on Facebook Messenger

Did you know that Facebook Messenger users don't even need to have a Facebook account to use it? You can find and add people to Messenger without adding them as friends on Facebook first.

Other Ways to Find People on Facebook

Other ways to find people on Facebook include searching for the user's phone number, employer, school, or any other relevant information they might have on their profile. To narrow things down, you can search public groups or your friends' contacts.