If you are anything like me, then you use Twitter a lot! I’ve sent over 35K tweets since joining the platform. I’ve even made a tutorial on how to see that count.

Today however, we’ll be looking at how to search through old tweets when no results are showing.

Introduction

Sometimes you search for something you sent before through the advanced search feature.

You typed in the search phrase and set your account as the target, and nothing! Your search yields zero results!

What could be the reason? The last window suggests checking search settings, you tamper with these and nothing!

You’re still unable to look for old tweets you’ve sent in the past.

Bummer, right?

It’s time to begin the trusty tutorial on how to search for old tweets when the search gives zero results

First of all: Request your twitter archive

Go to Settings > Your account > Download an archive of your data.

After entering your password you’ll be prompted with a form to verify your identity.

Sadly, it’s not that simple to download your twitter archive. Please refer to this post for extra help if you’re stuck on that step.

After completing that step, move on to step 2.

Extracting the information

Your twitter archive is a zipped folder that you need to extract in order to reach your tweets.

Double click the folder, then double click the file: Your archive.html

Accessing the information

This is an old archive save that I had prior to making this post, but for the purpose of explaining it would be ideal.

Scroll down to see the quick stats and click on the tweets count / Or tweets from the left side of the screen. As both lead

On the right side of the screen you can see the search field. There you can enter your search query.

I’ll be searching for the same word I searched for earlier, hiatus.

These tweets don’t exist in a vacuum. You can easily access them on twitter by clicking on view on twitter under any of the tweets.

Final words

This is how you search and view any tweet you can’t find on your account the normal way. We’ve learned how to use the Twitter archive to travel back in time and see any tweet of our choosing.

Thank you for reading. Please leave a comment below if you find this content useful.