Removing People from Circles
Of course, you may want to remove people from Circles (say if a work colleague has left or if you simply no longer want to follow a person’s updates).
Removing a person from a Circle is a straightforward process. The easiest way to do it is to drag the person from the Circle (as shown in Figure 5-3). Follow these steps:
1. Hover the mouse over a Circle to reveal the people contained within that Circle.
2. Click and hold the mouse over a person.
3. Drag him or her out of the Circle and let go.
A red trash icon appears to indicate that a person is being removed from a Circle. If you accidentally drag the wrong person from the Circle, it is possible to cancel the move by dragging the profile photo thumbnail back inside the Circle before releasing the mouse (or you can always search again and add that person to a Circle).
FIGURE 5-3 Dragging a person from a Circle removes him or her.
A more detailed method for removing people from a Circle is to move the Circle into the Stream to edit it. This is especially useful if you want to remove multiple people at once. Do the following:
1. Click a blue Circle at the bottom of the screen, or click and drag the Circle from the lower half of the screen to the people on the top half of the screen. The Stream displays people in that particular Circle (as shown in Figure 5-4).
2. Click to select people in the Stream whom you want to remove. You can select multiple people.
3. Click Remove (near the top of the screen) to take them out of the Circle.
4. To return to the main display of all the people in your Circles, click People in your circles.
FIGURE 5-4 Use the Remove link to delete people from a Circle.
It is possible (although somewhat convoluted) to move a person from one Circle to another (for example, if a friend becomes a member of your family). To do this, click a Circle at the bottom to reveal the people in that Circle in the Stream. Then drag a profile photo thumbnail from the Stream to the desired Circle; this copies that person to that other Circle (but does not delete him or her from the original one). With the profile photo thumbnail still highlighted, click Remove to bounce that person from the Circle.
Editing Multiple Circles Simultaneously It’s possible to select multiple people from different Circles and copy them all at once to a new Circle. If you have two people from Family and one from Acquaintances highlighted and drag the one person to Friends, all three are copied to the new Circle.
Complex Circle Navigation
Another neat trick to learn is how to perform detailed navigation of people within Circles. You can view the people in a Circle as well as drill down to selected people using the following steps:
1. Click a Circle to view the people in the Stream.
2. Click and select people from the Circle (now displayed in the Stream).
3. Click Selected to view just the selected people in the Stream.
4. Click the Circle link above the Stream (for example: Family) or click a blue Circle icon at the bottom of the Stream to switch back to viewing all the people from that Circle.
5. Click People in your circles to move back to viewing all the people in the Stream.
This technique is great to learn when your Circles become large and you want to narrow them down or split them into several smaller Circles.