moving li from one ul to another jQuery

Question

I'm trying to move list items from one un-ordered list to another. This works fine the first time but once the items are moved I am unable to move them back. I made a fiddle to illustrate what i'm talking about.

Check it out here -> jsfiddle

HTML

<table>
    <tr>
        <td>Numbers</td>
        <td>Letters</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>
            <ul class='list1'>
                <li>1</li>
                <li>2</li>
                <li>3</li>
                <li>4</li>
                <li>5</li>
            </ul>
        </td>
        <td>
            <ul class='list2'>
                <li>a</li>
                <li>b</li>
                <li>c</li>
                <li>d</li>
                <li>e</li>
            </ul>
        </td>
    </tr>
</table>
<input type='button' value='<<' id='move_left' />
<input type='button' value='>>' id='move_right' />

jQuery

$('body').on('click', 'li', function() {
   $(this).toggleClass('selected');
});

$('#move_left').click(function() {
    $('.list1').append('<li>', $('.list2 .selected').text(), '</li>');
    $('.list2 .selected').remove();
});

$('#move_right').click(function() {
    $('.list2').append('<li>', $('.list1 .selected').text(), '</li>');
    $('.list1 .selected').remove();
});

CSS

ul {
    list-style-type:none;
    padding:0px;
    margin:0px;
}

.selected {
    background-color:#efefef;
}

As you can see the items move from left to right or right to left, yet once they are moved i am unable to move them back. Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

It's easier than you think:

$('#move_left').click(function() {
    $('.list1').append($('.list2 .selected').removeClass('selected'));
});

$('#move_right').click(function() {
    $('.list2').append($('.list1 .selected').removeClass('selected'));
});

http://jsfiddle.net/KjJCa/2/

When you append an existing element to another, it is moved there. No need to clone the elements and manually remove the originals as you were doing.

Answer 2

try:

$('#move_left').click(function() {
    $('.list2 .selected').each(function(){
    $('.list1').append('<li>'+$(this).text()+'</li>');
    });
    $('.list2 .selected').remove();
});

$('#move_right').click(function() {
    $('.list1 .selected').each(function(){
    $('.list2').append('<li>'+$(this).text()+'</li>');
    });
    $('.list1 .selected').remove();
});

http://jsfiddle.net/liamallan1/KjJCa/3/