Restoring a hidden or deleted comment

A hidden comment can be restored: open it in the Inbox and click Unhide, and the tool un-hides it on Meta. A comment that was deleted cannot be restored — a delete on Facebook or Instagram is permanent. In practice, “restoring a comment” means un-hiding a comment that a Workflow’s Flag action, or a person’s Hide, took down.

The short version

Open the comment in the Inbox and click Unhide in its action row. That un-hides it on Meta and marks it Approved. Approve on its own only changes the comment’s status in the Inbox — it does not un-hide anything on Meta.

Why a comment is hidden

Two things hide a comment on Meta:

• A Workflow’s Flag action. When a branch runs Flag, the tool hides the comment on the platform (it sets is_hidden=true on Facebook and hide=true on Instagram) and sets the comment’s status to Flagged.
• A person’s Hide. Hide in a comment’s action row, or Hide on a bulk selection in the Inbox, hides the comment on the platform the same way and sets its status to Rejected.

Either way, the comment stays visible to you in the Inbox; it is only hidden from the public on the post. Because both are a hide and not a delete, both are reversible.

Input comment

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Matched condition

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Resulting action Flag

Flag hid this comment on Facebook and set its status to Flagged. Unhide brings it back.

Approve, Reject and Flag in the Inbox change status only

The Inbox’s Approve, Reject and Flag buttons (and their keyboard shortcuts) set the comment’s status for your own triage. None of them hides or un-hides anything on Meta. To change what the public sees, use Hide or Unhide.

Find the comment

The moderation surface is the Inbox.

1. Open the Inbox and stay on the Comments tab (it’s the default).
2. Filter by status: Flagged for comments a Workflow hid, Rejected for comments a person hid.
3. Use the search box to narrow by comment text or author if the list is long.
4. Confirm you have the right comment by its author and text before you act.

To see what hid the comment — which workflow and which action — open Analytics → Audit Log (the default tab on the Analytics page). Each entry records the workflow name and the action type. On the comment itself, the automation chip shows the same workflow name and action.

Keyboard shortcuts

The Inbox has keyboard shortcuts for working through a list quickly. Press ? in the Inbox to see them all.

Key	What it does
j / k	Move to the next / previous comment and open it
Enter	Open the first comment, or close the open one
Space	Select the open comment (for bulk actions)
a / r / f	Set the status to Approved / Rejected / Flagged (status only — nothing changes on Meta)
Shift + F	Toggle focus mode
/	Jump to the search box
Esc	Clear the selection; with nothing selected, leave focus mode or close the shortcut sheet

There is no shortcut for Unhide; use the button in the comment’s action row.

Restore a hidden comment

1. In the Inbox, open the hidden comment you want to bring back.
2. In the comment’s action row, click Unhide.
3. The tool un-hides the comment on Meta (it sets is_hidden=false on Facebook and hide=false on Instagram) and changes its status to Approved.

Unhide is sent to Meta as soon as you click it, and the panel shows whether Meta accepted it. A Workflow’s Allow action does the same thing automatically: it un-hides the comment and marks it Approved.

The action row offers Unhide only for a comment this tool hid. A comment hidden directly on Facebook or Instagram, outside the tool, shows Hide instead; un-hide it on the platform.

Unhide is blocked while a page has an observe-only Workflow

While any Workflow on the comment’s page is in observe-only mode, hand actions that change the comment on Meta — Hide, Unhide and the rest — are blocked for that page, and the tool tells you why. Take the Workflow live or turn it off, then unhide.

If the comment keeps getting re-hidden

Un-hiding fixes the current comment, but the workflow that flagged it will flag the next matching comment too. If a Flag branch is too aggressive, adjust its condition. See How workflows work and Testing rules before going live.

The delete caveat

Deletes are irreversible

A delete removes the comment from Facebook or Instagram, and it cannot be restored — not by this tool, and not on the platform. That applies to a Workflow’s Delete action and to Delete on Facebook / Delete on Instagram in a comment’s action row. For a reversible way to take a comment down, use Flag in a Workflow, or Hide by hand.

If a comment is missing from a Facebook or Instagram post and neither a Workflow nor a person in this tool hid or deleted it, it was removed on the platform itself (by the author, the Page, or Meta) — that is outside the tool and cannot be restored from here.

How restores appear in the log

After you unhide a comment:

• Its status changes to Approved in the Inbox. Find it again under the Approved filter.
• The action is written to Analytics → Audit Log. The Audit Log records actions people take as well as Workflow actions: hand actions appear with labels such as Manually Approved and Manually Rejected, and without a workflow name.

Screenshot — pending capture Analytics → Audit Log showing a moderation action in the trail

The Audit Log (Analytics → Audit Log) records moderation actions, by Workflows and by people.

Related

• Actions reference
• How workflows work
• What happens while an account is disconnected
• Data access and storage