Insights opens and some numbers are there, but one tile is empty, one badge shows no percentage, or the post you were looking for is missing. This guide is written for individual missing numbers: it names the cause of each symptom and what to do about it.
👉 If the whole screen is empty and everything is a dash, read The stats look empty instead. That guide checks permission, syncing and menu visibility in order.
You may be facing one of these situations:
- A metric tile shows a dash (—)
- A change badge says "Previous period unknown"
- Some days are blank in the chart
- The post I expected is not in the list
- The audience section is empty
- The AI commentary panel is missing entirely
- The automation session count is lower than the comment count
A metric tile shows a dash (—)
A dash means "Meta never provided this metric", not zero. There are four possible causes.
- The metric never arrived during that period. If no day in the period carries it, the total becomes a dash. Widen the period (Last 28 days instead of Last 7 days) and see whether the figure fills in.
- Meta does not provide that metric for this account. Metrics such as Reposts and Replies are not recognised on every account or API version. This is a restriction on Meta's side and cannot be switched on from the panel.
- The insights permission has not been approved yet. A yellow banner sits at the top of the screen.
- The day is not over yet. In periods that include today, the last day or two will be incomplete; Meta lags by up to 48 hours.
What to do: widen the period, then use the Refresh button. If the metric is still a dash, Meta is not producing it for this account.
A change badge says "Previous period unknown"
This means the comparison is missing, not the figure.
There is a single cause: the comparison window is entirely absent from the archive. The panel stores only what happened after you connected the account, and the first sync backfills 30 days. If the comparison window reaches back before the archive began, the two totals cover different numbers of days and cannot be compared.
- Read the "Records kept since {day}" line at the top right of the page.
- Compare it with the first day in the "Compared with" line under the heading.
- If the comparison window is older than the archive, pick a shorter period. For example Last 28 days instead of Last 90 days.
As the archive accumulates, longer periods begin to show percentages too. Counting the missing days as zero would be wrong; the panel does not invent figures it does not have.
Some days are blank in the chart
In the Daily views and reach chart, the days drawn as a thin baseline are "no measurement" days. Hover one and the tooltip says so: "14 Sep · no measurement".
- If the last day or two is blank, that is Meta's lag; it fills in within a few days.
- If the days before the archive's first day are blank, they stay blank permanently.
- If a day in the middle is blank, the sync run could not get data from Meta for that day. Press Refresh; the panel rewrites the last 3 days on every run, but an older gap may not fill.
The Daily message flow chart in Reports works differently: there a day with no records is drawn as an empty bar, because those figures come from the panel's own records and "zero messages" is a known fact.
The post I expected is not in the list
The list on the Posts tab comes from the post picker's cache. Check these in order.
- Clear the search box. If you are searching captions, the list may have narrowed. A post with no caption never appears in search results.
- Set the sorting to Date and leave it descending. The newest post will be at the top.
- Page through the list. There are 20 posts per page, and the status line at the bottom shows the total.
- Make sure the post was not deleted. Deleted posts drop out of the list, and their past metrics are not shown either.
- You will not find stories. The list holds feed posts, and Meta only provides story metrics for a short while.
- The list may never have been fetched. Opening the post picker in the automation editor once fills the cache.
If the post is in the list but its numbers are empty and an Awaiting metrics badge sits beside it, its turn has not come: post metrics are refreshed every 12 hours, 12 posts per run.
The audience section is empty
If you see a single sentence — "Audience breakdown has not arrived yet." — the cause is usually Meta's own rule.
- Check your follower count. Meta only provides demographics for accounts with at least 100 followers. Below that threshold there is nothing to do.
- Wait a day. Demographics refresh once a day; if the account was just connected, the first run may not have happened yet.
- Read the permission banner. A yellow banner at the top means the insights permission is not approved yet.
- Do not try changing the period. Demographics are a lifetime distribution; the period picker does not affect this section.
If the section appears but one breakdown is missing (age is there, gender is not), Meta may be hiding that breakdown because its headcount is small.
If the panel is not empty but absent, this is not a data problem. There are four causes:
- AI is switched off for that portfolio. The plan or a portfolio setting decides it.
- There is no AI key.
- The AI credits have run out. See The AI credits ran out.
- The post commentary is a separate sub-feature. It is normal for the panel to exist on the Overview and not on a post's page.
If the panel is there but shows only an explanatory line instead of a button, a permission is missing: generating a commentary requires automation edit permission.
If the panel is there, there is no text, and it reads "No commentary for this period yet.", that does not mean the data is empty; no commentary has been generated for that period yet. The period commentary is stored per period, so the one you generated yesterday for "Last 7 days" will not appear today.
The automation sessions badge on the post analysis counts the real sessions that started from that post through the comment trigger. It does not have to equal the comment count.
Ordinary reasons for the gap:
- The comment's text did not match the trigger's keyword.
- The person was already inside the same flow.
- The loop guard kicked in.
- The automation was not live at that moment.
- The comment was yours or a teammate's.
If the count is zero, check whether the automation is running at all with the Comment replies are not going out guide.
If the problem persists
If none of the symptoms above match, do these three things in order:
- Press Refresh and read the notification. If it says "The metrics could not be refreshed because the Instagram connection is broken.", repair the connection first: The connection dropped.
- Wait three days and open the same period again. Meta's lag closes most gaps on its own.
- Check the "last synced" line at the top right of the page. If the timestamp is very old, the sync may not have been queued.
If you have followed all the steps and the problem persists, contact our Support team.
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