Saturday, September 19, 2009

How to Delete a Friend's List in Facebook

Facebook let's you separate your friends into categories. There are many different reasons why folks might want to do this.  But sometimes, you may also want to delete one of the lists you've created.   And doing so can be a tricky if you're new to Facebook, so I thought I'd share the secret with you.

A couple of days ago, I created a friends list called, "Mafia Friends" and added all of my friends to it that were playing Mafia Wars.  My hope was that I could use this list to publish the many Mafia achievement notices too (that way others won't have to look at them).  Sadly, Mafia Wars didn't give me the option to publish those posts to a specific friends list ... so I decided to delete it.

If you have a similar friends list you'd like to delete, here are the steps to do so.

  1. At the top of your Facebook page, you'll see a blue toolbar.  Click "Friends" on it. 

  1. When you get to the Friends page, on the left side of the screen look under the heading, "Lists" for the list you've created (and want to delete).  
In my case, the list I want to delete, is called, "Mafia Friends"
Click on the list you want to delete.


  1. At the top of the next screen (above your friends), you'll see a gray button that reads, "Delete List".  Click on it to delete the list.  


Note that when you delete a friends list, the friends that were in this list are still your friends, they just don't belong to this list anymore.


UPDATE:  Feb, 17, 2010:

Naturally the Faecebook programmers decided they needed to change the layout once again on Facebook so these "how to" instructions are not completely accurate anymore - but the concept is the same. You can still create and delete special friends lists in the new Facebook.  But now, you'll want to follow the instructions below:
  1. Click ACCOUNT and then EDIT FRIENDS (top right corner of Facebook screen)
  2. Under "Lists" in the left navigation, click FRIENDS
  3. The DELETE LIST button is now above your friends.
 Hopefully it will be a while before Facebook decides to change their layout again.

17 comments:

  1. thank you!!!! so muchh

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  2. Ummm.... What About New (Stupid) facebook... :3

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  3. thank you so much! used your updated one and fixed my problem very easily!

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  4. Thank you!! I was so glad you had the updated one, it helped!

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  5. oh my god, you have no idea how much this was annoying me. everyone else has the old instructions posted. (idiot programmers) thanks!

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  6. thanks..i was a bit confused with the new facebook..

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  7. thanks so much, that was awful trying to find that option!!!!

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  8. So stupid that Facebook made such a simple option so difficult to find, grrrrrr. Thanks for solving that, it was really bugging me!!

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  9. Just wanted to thank you for this info. Helped me loads.

    I just wish we could delete FRIENDS LISTS with ALL those within in ONE move too.

    Like you, I also have people added into different groups, such as Mafia Wars, Farmville etc...

    I no longer play certain games anymore, but if I want to delete these people it's one at a time! It's so annoying!!

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  10. this is the old version of FB, how can we delete in the new version of FB ?

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  11. If not you I'd look for it for years! Thanks man!

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  12. I CANT GET IT WAT U SAID THERE IS NOTHING LIKE THAT

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  13. Cheers! Been wondering how to delete a list for a while now... I did the exact same thing that you did on Mafia Wars, except on Farmville.

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  14. Thanks a lot! The update worked perfectly!

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  15. Looks like the link has been moved to the bottom of the friends list now.

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  16. Thanks - was going crazy at the Facebook help page. They still have the old instructions.

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