I have a client that was upset about using the Business Manager tool on Facebook. Her business partner had turned it on but they later found that they couldn’t use Facebook apps or get back to the personal area without a lot of trouble.
I discovered this myself when it first came out. As an internet professional, much of my testing and learning about new tools comes about when I use my own accounts as the guinea pig. I usually wait until I hear reviews from other pros before putting myself in the line of fire but I went ahead and jumped in the deep end.
I regretted it immediately
The benefits of Business Manager are clear. It’s recommended to use it if you have more than three pages and multiple admins. It’s also a good idea for agencies that manage pages for their clients.
The downsides aren’t as clear. It’s not until you upgrade that you realize the mobile apps won’t work anymore. The Pages app and the mobile FB app are both separate from the new manager so all your work must be done from the desktop version of Facebook.
Now, most of the time, I’m critical and careful about my posts so this isn’t the biggest problem. My biggest complaint is that we currently can’t monitor the activity on pages from mobile. This is an issue for social media managers that have to attend meetings or be away from their desks for any length of time. Just ask one, if they couldn’t see the notifications of their accounts via their phones, you’d see the sweat start to pour down their forehead.
I’m sure at some point there will be a Business Manager app but until that time, this new “feature” hobbles managers and forces them to stay close to a desktop and obsessively check their page activity. I even tried downloading the new Facebook Ads app but it’s not the solution either.
When it was my account, I hit the Help button and begged them to reverse it which they did with no argument. The client I mentioned at the top of this blog wasn’t so lucky. She’d tried everything she could think of and wasn’t able to remove it so she asked for my help. I found the following instructions in a Facebook Community thread, tried it, and it worked!
How to remove Facebook Business Manager
- in the Business Manager page click the cog shaped icon top right of screen
- select BUSINESS MANAGER SETTINGS
- select pages (left hand side)
- add new page
- create a new page (I called mine Test Page)
- select Info (button left hand side)
- where is says primary page (your actual page) click the edit icon (pencil)
- type in the new page to the box next to Primary page
- your new page should highlight
- select the new page and save
- go back to Pages
- select your real business page
- click remove
- (alternate instructions: Settings>Pages>click the page you want and simply click “REMOVE”)
- Instructions directly from Facebook as of 3/24/16
Didn’t Work? Try This
When I originally wrote this blog in July 2015, these instructions worked for me. This is one of my Top 5 blogs of all time and on average, 1 out of 10 people still find relief from those instructions.
I reinstalled my Business Page into Business Manager recently just so I could do this process again for you. These new instructions (and screenshot below) are from June 2018. You can find them on Facebook Help here.
- When in Business Manager, open Business Settings
- Click Accounts and click Pages
- Select the Page you’d like to remove and click Remove
- As of 3/11/20, you had to schedule your page to be deleted. Whatever they tell you (14 days is common), put it on your calendar and make sure they did it. If they didn’t (also common) go through the process again. The second time, it works immediately.
