Saturday, January 26, 2013

Tips: Cannot connect to Facebook Chat - friends online are not displayed.

The integration of Facebook Chat into the messaging hub is one of the selling points of Windows Phone since the release of Mango or Windows Phone 7.5 a bit less than two years ago. Starting a conversation on Facebook and then seamlessly switch to SMS in case of a loss of connectivity is awesome and unique to the Windows Phone platform. But as with everything in the world of technology, and no matter how good the technology is, it also breaks. It occurred to me at least once, where Facebook Chat will not connect or will not display my list of friends who are online. Facebook website will display my friends available for chatting, but not the app. How do you solve that problem without a hard reset or throwing the phone out the window from a ten storey building, which equals to an extreme version of a physical hard reset.
The process to solve this problem is simple and straight forward. Let's start with the phone.
  1. Go to Settings > email+accounts and delete the Facebook account. Press and hold on Facebook and press Delete.
  2. Now we need to let Windows Live/Microsoft Account know that we've removed Facebook from our phone. So press and hold on Windows Live/Microsoft Account and select sync. At this point, we're done with the phone, for now.
  3. Log on to profile.live.com on a PC.
  4. Click Manage
  5. Click Edit under Facebook.
  6. At the bottom of the screen, click "Remove this connection completely".
Stay with me as we're almost done. At least on the PC where you can sign out of your profile page. Let's now go back to the phone. The next step consists of simply re-adding the Facebook account to the phone.
  1. If you're not there already, go to Settings > email+accounts.
  2. Tap "add an account" and select Facebook
  3. Tap the Email address box, and then type the email address that is associated with your Facebook account.
  4. Tap the Password box, and then type your Facebook password.
  5. Tap sign in.
  6. If you haven't linked your Facebook account to your Windows Live ID, you'll be asked if you'd like to link them now. Tap Connect to go to a Facebook website
  7. Follow the instruction to connect your account.
  8. Finally, we need to verify that Facebook Chat is enabled on the phone. This setting is found in Settings > Messaging for both Windows Phone 7.5 and 8.
Start messaging and swipe to the left to access Facebook Chat and voilà; all your contacts are back, at least those who are online, and your status is now set as available.
The above steps have worked for me and users on the Microsoft Answers Forums. In the unlikely event that it doesn't fix your issue, let me know in the comment area or use the Microsoft Forums.

19 comments:

Unknown said...

did all the processes..all the things..still not working..using Lumia 820 with WP8.

Anonymous said...

Same here nothing happened. :\

Linley Meslier said...

What exactly are your issues?

sarim_xyz said...

Sorry, this didn't work out for me. Is there some issue at Microsoft's end? Interestingly, sometimes, one or two facebook people are shown online, and other times, it says "no one is online". Messenger chat is working fine.

Anonymous said...

Sorry this did not work for me either! I was really hoping it would as my phone not connecting to chat properly is doing my head in! It sometimes shows me one person or no one at all. Anyone know how to contact Microsoft as I think it is a problem their end? Thanks

Anonymous said...

@sarim_xyz same problem happening here...it'll show either "no one is online" or one or two contacts, but when I log into facebook on my laptop, there's way more people actually online so, something has to be up either on Microsoft or Facebook's end. I tried the steps in this post, as well as resetting my phone...no hope. I'm wondering if the latest software update is the issue, because I think my chat was working fine before I downloaded the new update...

Linley Meslier said...

Ok folks, I'm also having the same issues. Only my Messenger contacts are showing up as online and just one Facebook contact. The site shows a lot more. I'm investigating the issue and I'll get back to you all asap.

Linley Meslier said...

This is a known issue and they are working on a fix. I don't have any details about its availability, so I'll post back here where it's released.

Linley Meslier said...

Issue has been fixed :-)

Anonymous said...

still not resolve error is no one is online

Please help us

Linley Meslier said...

Sorry to hear that you are still having issues. Send me an email with as much details as possible and i'll try to help. Thanks.

Linley.

Anonymous said...

hey help me out i too have the same problem if i log in from a different profile then the chat works bt my account it simply refuses to wat shud i do i hv tried everything

Ujjwal Thaakar said...

I have tried everything I can including your instructions. Previously I could chat on profile.live.com
Now there it says turn on Facebook chat to send a message but clicking it has no effect!
This is only happening since the last 2 days! Please help me if you can!

Linley Meslier said...

Ujjwal,

Is Facebook Chat "On" in Outlook.com? Login to Outlook.com. Click on your profile picture at the top right of the screen. Click "Available on" and "On".

PA said...

When I click on On the menu closes when I check again it stays Off all the time. In msg hub it says i'm signed in but I canno see my online frinds or send receive msgs.

My wifes phone worked perfectly till the 7.8 update now she also has some issues but not all the time.

don't have a clue of what to do.

Tyler said...

My solution is to a TURN OFF BATTER MODE/SAVER!!! It instantly worked after I turned that off!

Anonymous said...

Ive tried this solution, my battery saver mode is off, Ive deleted, readded facebook in settings/email & accounts, Ive readded facebook in profile, synced after readding, still same thing - cant connect to chat, Im seriously considering the hard reset via the wall.
It worked fine about 2 weeks ago and then this problem, my phones a HTC Windows 8X

Anonymous said...

none of the solutions posted worked for me too. Using Lumia 1520.

Anonymous said...

same problem with me since last 2-3 days. iam using 520.