Answers.Body: <p>As Sanjay said, yep it'll work. In practice we've found it causes trouble, though. In our experience it confuses non-technical users, who will then merrily start adding/removing people from smart groups directly (rather than changing the underlying criteria that the smart group was built on).</p>
  
  <p>It also causes odd UI issues - I've definitely seen pages where manually-added people aren't included in counts, though this is probably a bug.</p>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2016-01-18T17:17:17.640Z
Answers.LastActivityDate: 2016-01-18T17:17:17.640Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: Andrew West
Answers.Body: <p>There's a good reason that smart groups have this feature - if you use a smart group as a mailing group, then you'll often want to allow recipients to remove themselves from the group (even when they still satisfy the smart group criteria). It'd be nice to be able to be able to track these, and you can in theory since adding and removing contacts leaves a trail.</p>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2016-01-19T19:58:33.800Z
Answers.LastActivityDate: 2016-01-19T19:58:33.800Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: Alan Dixon
Answers.Body: <p>If you manually add a contact to a Smart Group, the system will maintain that information, similarly if you remove a contact the system will not add the contact back in automatically.</p>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2016-01-18T15:11:41.080Z
Answers.LastActivityDate: 2016-01-18T15:11:41.080Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: Sanjay Jain
Body: <p>If you manually add/remove contacts to a Smart Group will they remain in the group when the group updates?</p>
  
Tags: <groups><smartgroups>
Title: Manually adding/removing contacts in a Smart Group
ThreadText: # Manually adding/removing contacts in a Smart Group
  
  (Asked by: username_0 on 2016-01-18)
  
  If you manually add/remove contacts to a Smart Group will they remain in the group when the group updates?
  
  **Tags:** groups, smartgroups
  
  
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  ## 3 answers
  
  ### Answer by username_3 on 2016-01-18. Score: 3 | Accepted answer
  
  If you manually add a contact to a Smart Group, the system will maintain that information, similarly if you remove a contact the system will not add the contact back in automatically.
  
  
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  ### Answer by username_1 on 2016-01-18. Score: 2
  
  As Sanjay said, yep it'll work. In practice we've found it causes trouble, though. In our experience it confuses non-technical users, who will then merrily start adding/removing people from smart groups directly (rather than changing the underlying criteria that the smart group was built on).
  
  It also causes odd UI issues - I've definitely seen pages where manually-added people aren't included in counts, though this is probably a bug.
  
  
  ---
  
  ### Answer by username_2 on 2016-01-19. Score: 1
  
  There's a good reason that smart groups have this feature - if you use a smart group as a mailing group, then you'll often want to allow recipients to remove themselves from the group (even when they still satisfy the smart group criteria). It'd be nice to be able to be able to track these, and you can in theory since adding and removing contacts leaves a trail.
  
  
  ---
  
  