I run a number of Facebook business pages for clients and want to turn off the private messages inbox entirely on all of them. Can I turn off “Messages” on Facebook?
As someone with five business Facebook pages of my own, I completely understand your desire: It’s hard enough to keep up on the public posts, comments, and engagement without adding a batch of additional inboxes to the list. That’s why so many business pages on Facebook don’t have a “Message” link: the admins would rather you post your questions and comments in the public eye instead.
Problem is, it can be a bit confusing to figure out exactly how to disable private messaging on a Facebook business page, so I think a lot of FB pages have inboxes full of questions and comments from customers that are completely ignored because the admins don’t even realize that the inbox exists, not to mention the filtered and spam-tagged messages!
So let’s have a look.
First, my AskDaveTaylor.com Facebook page (yes, you should click “Like”):
See the “Message” button on the right side? Yeah, that’s what you want to remove.
But before you do, be aware that it does show up along the business page admin toolbar on the top of the page:
But not only is there an inbox you have to track, there are actually two, as shown:
Facebook isn’t always great with tagging spam either, so it’s entirely possible that customer queries have come in and sat, ignored, for months or years. Another good reason to disable this feature in my opinion.
To do that, click on “Settings” on the top admin toolbar. There are a zillion options, but choose “General”:
Look down just a few entries on the right for “Messages”. Here’s a closeup:
Click on “Edit”.
Ah, there’s the problem. Uncheck the box…
Click “Save Changes” and you’re done.
No more “Message” button:
Now you know, jump over and turn off Message for all your Facebook business pages that you desire!
This didn’t work for me. I have the messaging box UNCHECKED for my page, and the message button doesn’t show on my page….but people still message me. All spam messages. How do I turn this off?
Same for me. I turned off messages as this post shows but people still contac me through my business account. Super frustrating.
Hello,
Very helpful, but I’m wondering if you know the answer to this:
If I leave messages “on” will it be accessible to all page admins? In other words, I’d like to have other admins but NOT have them have access to the inbox messages. It’s for a church, and privacy issues are important. If not, I will just turn the whole thing off.
Hi Norm. As far as I know, all admins basically have the same permissions so in your case, I would disable messages and pin a note to the top of the church Facebook page inviting people to contact you through another channel instead.