Get Started with Searching Through Your Own Tweets

Twitter, believe it or not, has bee around, for almost nine years now. Since its launch back in 2006, it's become one of the most popular social networks ever and has changed the way we break and discover news in real time.

It's relatively easy to produce thousands and thousands of tweets if you've been using Twitter for years, or if you're just a very active user. You can see your tweet count by going to your profile and looking at your "Tweets" number just below your header (or scroll down your profile a bit if you're on mobile to see your count appear at the top).

Many people who've been active on Twitter for years have tens of thousands of tweets. That's a lot of tweeting!

With thousands of tweets dating years back, it would be far too time-consuming to scroll back through your profile feed to look for something specific that you previously tweeted. There's a much easier and faster way to do it.

To find out how you can search through your own tweets on Twitter, browse through the following screenshots for a short tutorial on exactly how it's done.

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Go to Twitter's Advanced Search Page

You may have already used the search function you see at the top of virtually every Twitter web page or mobile app tab, but for more specific searches, you'll need to access Twitter's Advanced Search page. It lets you fill out a variety of fields so you can get more precise search results.

To search your own tweets, there are at least two fields you'll need to fill out. The first essential one is the From these accounts field listed under the People section.

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Enter Your Own Twitter Handle in the 'From these Accounts' Field

In the From these accounts field, type out your own Twitter handle (username)—without the "@" symbol. This will ensure that all the search results you'll receive will only be from your own account.

Now, you should fill out at least one other field on the page to specify part of a tweet or tweets that you're looking for to drill down your results. If you just have a basic word or phrase to search, you can use the first All of these words field.

You can also search by:

An exact phrase
Any group of words
None of a group of specific words
Specific hashtags
Any language
Tweets to specific users
User mentions
Locations
Date or time period
Happy face signs :) or sad face signs :(
Question marks
Retweets included

You can use any of the search fields provided, and maybe even play around with them to see the different results you get.

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Press 'Search' After Filling Out at Least One Other Field

Once you have your Twitter handle (without the "@" symbol) in the From these accounts field and at least one other field filled out, you can hit the blue Search button at the bottom to see your results, which will be displayed directly on Twitter.

For example, let's say you want to search for any tweets about Facebook from the @Lifewire Twitter account. You would type "Lifewire" in the From these accounts field and the word "Facebook" in the All of these words field.

Hint: You can also search tweets from multiple accounts. You can do that by typing multiple Twitter handles in the From these accounts field and separate them with a comma and space.

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Optional Alternative: Download Your Twitter Archive to Search Your Tweets

Twitter's Advanced Search is the easiest and fastest way to search through your own tweets, or for any tweets at all for that matter, but if you want, you can get access to all the tweets you've ever tweeted by downloading your Twitter archive.

To do this, access your user settings, and under the Account tab, scroll down to a button labeled Request your archive. When you press that, you'll receive an email informing you that your request was sent and your archive will be emailed to you when it's ready.

You may have to wait some time before you receive your archive, but when you do, it will be in the form of a ZIP file that you can download to your computer. From there, you should be able to access a list of all your tweets since day one in spreadsheet format, which you can use to search through as an alternative to using Twitter's Advanced Search page.