Inviting All Friends to Facebook Events

Update June 7, 2011: Sometime last week it appears the script no longer works. If someone finds another solution, or writes a new script, we would love it if you let us know.

Update March 16, 2011: Not exactly sure when Facebook rolled out the changes to their events (sometime in the last week?). The original referenced script no longer works with the newest changes. Thanks to one of the super people who commented below (Michele). He shared a new script that allows you to invite 200 at a time. His post indicates he tested in Chrome and I tested in Firefox. You can repeat the process (200 at a time). Thanks, Michele

Additional note discovered by another reader ~ if you scroll to the bottom of your friends list (in the pop-up window) before running the script in your browser it will select all friends. It may take awhile…in my tests in both Firefox and Chrome it took about 7 minutes to fully process.

Here is the new javascript: (download in .txt file)

javascript:elms=document.getElementsByName(“checkableitems[]“);for (i=0;i<elms.length;i++){if (elms[i].type=”checkbox” )elms[i].click()};

If the code above doesn’t work please download it from the .txt file link above.

My job on a day-to-day basis is all about efficiency, doing more in less time and finding nifty tips and tricks that help me and my clients. That’s why I’m excited, in a geeky way (of course) about this trick that is specific to Facebook Events.

If you’re one of those folks who regularly creates events in Facebook, you probably know what I mean. Your wrist gets all tingly and ultimately falls asleep and you find yourself bored to tears from the sheer drudgery of all the scrolling down and clicking each friend’s avatar to invite them to your stinking event. For you, this will be one of those Hallelujah! moments.

And the super HooDoo VooDoo magic trick? Well, it allows you to use a nifty Javascript command in your browser. Instead of clicking each person’s name/avatar individually in the “select guests to invite” window, it will automatically select all of your friends. Hooray!

In my first test, I used Firefox and it took about seven minutes. (Firefox actually initially said “not responding,” but I left well enough alone and sure enough, voila it worked like a charm.)

In my second test I used Chrome and it literally worked in less than 10 seconds. Here’s what you do:

1. Create your event and save
2. Go back to “edit event”
3. Chose “Select Guests to Invite” button
4. Wait for all friends to load, which may take some time
5. Paste the command below into address bar of your browser (NOT the search bar that shows in the pop-up box that loads when you chose “select guests to invite”)

javascript:elms=document.getElementById(‘friends’).getElementsByTagName(‘li’);for(var fid in elms){if(typeof elms[fid] === ‘object’){fs.click(elms[fid]);}}

This screenshot is from Chrome of the Javascript command in your browser URL area

Be patient and let your browser do its thing ~ wait until all of your friends avatars are highlighted as “selected” guests. In the screenshot below, upper right corner you will see “1108” as the selected number.

Once all of your friends are selected, you can enter a personal message (optional) and then just hit “Save and Close.”

Hopefully, if you’re a crazy multi-tasker like me, and creating events and inviting folks to them, you’ll enjoy this as much as I do

PS: Since I did test number two in Chrome I took my screenshots there using Awesome Screenshot browser add on that Shelly recently wrote about. I was a Jing user, but am now totally sold on Awesome Screenshot after trying it for the first time with the above screenshots. Woohoo!