how do i take back materia from team mates that are gone

[Xander1009]

what buttons do I press

[Kiss My Ax]

If they are gone im very sure you cannot take it back

[Xander1009]

okay
thanks

[Alucard]

Originally posted by Kiss-My-Ax:

If they are gone im very sure you cannot take it back

That's totally INCORRECT.

You can indeed access and manage the Materia that's equipped on your characters that aren't currently present in your party.

To do this follow these steps:
--> Go into the Menu;
--> Pick the Materia sub-menu;
--> Select a character (anyone will do);
--> Now, inside the Materia sub-menu you'll want to move the cursor over to the word "Arrange" that's to the left, just press left on the control pad and navigate the cursor to it;
--> Press OK and a small window will pop up with 4 different options;
--> From all the options available, choose the option "Exchange".

Doing this will open up the Exchange Menu, and in there you can pretty much equip or un-equip any character (even the ones that aren't in your party at the moment).

This Exchange Menu is extremely useful for managing Materia between all your characters (especially late-game when you can have a total of 9 characters).
Here you can switch Materia between characters either by selecting and moving a single Materia one-by-one or by selecting a whole row of Materia to transfer over to someone else.
To select a whole row you have to move the cursor to either one of the 3 words on the left, the words are: Name of the character; "Wpn"; and "Arm".

• Selecting the Name of the character will let you transfer that character's entire Materia setup to another character;
  
  
• Selecting the "Wpn" will let you transfer the row of Materia equipped to that character's weapon;
  
  
• Selecting the "Arm" will let you transfer the row of Materia equipped to that character's armor.

It should look something like this:

Cloud
Wpn ( )=( ) ( )=( ) ( )=( ) ( )=( )
Arm ( )=( ) ( )=( ) ( )=( ) ( )=( )

Barret
Wpn ( )=( ) ( )=( ) ( )=( ) ( )=( )
Arm ( )=( ) ( )=( ) ( )=( ) ( )=( )

Tifa
Wpn ( )=( ) ( )=( ) ( )=( ) ( )=( )
Arm ( )=( ) ( )=( ) ( )=( ) ( )=( )

Aerith
Wpn ( )=( ) ( )=( ) ( )=( ) ( )=( )
Arm ( )=( ) ( )=( ) ( )=( ) ( )=( )

Red XIII
Wpn ( )=( ) ( )=( ) ( )=( ) ( )=( )
Arm ( )=( ) ( )=( ) ( )=( ) ( )=( )

(I stopped after the first 5 characters)

To the right of the character's Materia slots will be your un-equipped Materia Inventory, so you also have access to those while in here if you wish to equip something else.

If you have any more questions about this feel free to ask.

[Electric Cupcake]

^This. Using the exchange menu is admittedly a bit cumbersome. An "unequip all" option for all characters not in the currrent party like in 6 is sorely missed.

[Alucard]

Originally posted by Hugsie Muffinball:

^This. Using the exchange menu is admittedly a bit cumbersome. An "unequip all" option for all characters not in the currrent party like in 6 is sorely missed.

To be honest, after you know that the Exchange Menu is there, THIS is the best option between the 2 systems, in my opinion.
With the huge list of Materia that you can potentially have (especially in the late game), the existence of this kind of Menu for the use of players is crucial to be able to manage your Materia among all your characters in a timely manner.

And I say this because the only thing an "Un-Equip All" function would accomplish is, like the name implies, removing all the Materia at once from the characters.
But, what if I don't want or need to remove all of the Materia from all those characters?
What if I, let's say, only need one, two or three of them and don't want to mess up (that is, reset) everyone else's Materia setups because of just the one, two or three Materia I need?
If that was the only option given to the player, then one would have to eventually have to re-equip everyone else's Materia setup EVERY SINGLE TIME one uses that function, which would consume a lot of time, every time.

It was a good system for Final Fantasy VI with 31 Espers at the most, but completely inadequate for a game like Final Fantasy VII with its Materia system with a total of 83 unique Materia alone, and the possibility of carrying up to 200 orbs in your Materia Inventory, and that's not even counting the Materia that you could also have equipped to your characters, which, in the best scenario, could be 144 more orbs on top, bringing the grand sum to a whopping 344 Materia that you could have on you, overall.

In conclusion, with the Exchange Menu one can meticulously manage Materia equipping to ALL characters at the same time, all the time.
Sure, one could argue that it is a more complicated option to use than simply pressing an "Un-Equip All" button, and in retort to that, I would argue that the only true difficulty here is exclusively the time it could take for someone to get to know and be familiarized with how the Exchange Menu system works (which, honestly, I don't think anyone would need to take more than a few minutes, or less, to understand).
It is precisely because of this extra layer of "complexity" that it is also the most powerful and convenient tool to cover all of your Materia management needs.
To reiterate my previous comment:
Not only can you transfer Materia one-by-one from character to character, but you can also transfer entire rows - or entire setups even - from character to character with it.
And with the Materia Inventory showing on the right you also have easy access to all un-equipped Materia as well if you want to equip any of it to any character.