How to Find Long Lost Friends and Contacts in France

Have you been meaning to get back in touch with an acquaintance in France? Is a Google search simply not leading to the results you need? Here are several easy ways to track down your long lost French friends and contacts.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. 
    

   Check social networking sites. Facebook and LinkedIn have both recently become popular in Europe and are a good place to start, particularly for the under-30 crowd.

2. 
    
   Pages Blanches, the French white pages

   If this fails, try the French version of Yellow Pages, known as "Pages Jaunes." Make sure to click on the "Pages Blanches" tab at the top of your screen -- this is the French version of the white pages.

3. 
    
   Enter where your friend lives

   Do you remember roughly where your contact lives? If so, enter the person's last name in the "nom" field, and first name in the space marked "prénom." To narrow your search, add as much of the address as you know, even if you only remember the city or region of France.

4. 
    
   This question asks

   If this doesn't work, or you can't recall your acquaintance's address, click the "qui porte ce nom" tab at the top of the page.

5. 
    

   Enter the last name in the field marked "saisir un nom" and first name under "préciser le prénom (facultatif)."

6. 
    

   Click "Trouver." This will return search results for everyone with your contact's name within all of France. With any luck, your contact's name should appear in this list!

Tips & Warnings

• Even if you don't know the exact city your acquaintance lives in, try to include the region -- this will narrow down your search, especially if your contact has a very common name!

Resources

• Pages Jaunes, the French online phone book
• Facebook, a popular social networking site
• LinkedIn, a social networking site for professionals

[cadburyqueen]

on 4/23/2009 I have used http://www.yasni.com before to track down long lost friends. It is the biggest people search engine in the world and as it is global, you stand a better chance of finding someone. All you have to do is type in their name and see what results come up, then you might find some useful contact info.