Recovering Access to Your Facebook Business Page and Ad Account

December 12, 2020

Losing access to your Facebook Business Manager, Ad Account, or Page can be really frustrating. And it probably makes you wish you spent more time making sure your passwords were shared more widely across your organization.

We experienced an issue like this recently, and this is how we solved it.

Facebook doesn’t do a good job of handling this situation, and they don’t have a formal process. Normally, individuals can transfer ownership, but in circumstances where that is not possible, there is a work-around.

1. File a trademark complaint: https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/634636770043106
2. Tell the Facebook contact what the situation is about  (e.g. the employee leaving)
3. Facebook will transfer you to the Page Admin group, which will request some items to prove trademark/business ownership
4. They will request you create a new account with a current employee as the admin
5. They can then merge that new account with the old account, effectively making the current admin the admin on the original accounts as well.

It’s not straightforward, but I spent a lot of time looking into this and this has been the most successful tactic for advertisers in this situation.