The present contribution is a review of the recent progress in combining a full adsorption=desorption procedure with size exclusion chromatography (FAD=SEC) for the separation and characterization of (co)polymers. FAD includes complete and selective adsorption of the polymer sample to be separated from an adsorption promoting-liquid (adsorli) onto an appropriate adsorbent, which is packed in an especially designed LC-like (micro)column. In the following steps, macromolecules are successively displaced from the adsorbent by different eluents with increasing desorbing strength. Adsorption and desorption of macromolecules are generally governed by their molecular characteristics, primarily by their molar mass (MM) and their chemical nature, that is, by their chemical composition (CC). Therefore, fractionation of polymers according to these parameters can be reached in the course of the FAD process. In this respect, a coupling of an SEC instrument with the FAD column has turned out to be very advantageous. The on-line SEC enables monitoring the amount, molar mass and molar mass distribution of macromolecules leaving the FAD column. In this way, constituents of polymer blends can be discriminated and independently characterized.Advantages and problems associated with the applications of FAD approaches are outlined. The assessment of dynamic adsorption=desorption of macromolecules onto=from solid surfaces as part of the optimization procedure is discussed as well.Polymer science and technology is required to meet product and market needs. The effectiveness of R & D should be carried out with a strong regard to product quality, as well as to safety, health and environmental values like waste reduction and energy conservation. Recently, we have witnessed rapid development of high-performance polymeric materials, e.g., polymer blends, copolymers, sequenced and functionalized polymers, i.e., complex polymer systems. Complex polymers exhibit multiple distributions, namely molar mass distribution, chemical composition distribution, distribution of functionalities, distribution of sequence lengths and possibly also physical, structural and topological distributions. These distributions are well known to affect both the processing ability and the end-use properties of polymeric materials. Therefore, the establishment of relationships between structure, processing and properties is of great importance for the development of novel polymeric materials. As a result, measurement of average properties is often inadequate to fully characterize and elucidate the nature of such materials. In other words, methods that do not involve any separation, such as osmometry, light scattering, viscometry, NMR or FT-IR and classical methods for end-group determination, can yield only average values, e.g., molar mass, chemical composition and functionality, but not their distribution(s). A combination of separation and characterization techniques or multidimensional approaches represents one of the options to fulfill the complicated task of analys...