Moving component: Links now break

Hey @Taylor_Rubes, thank you for reaching out!

Is it happening in the browser, desktop app or both?

Can you try clearing out the cache? Also please try to force-quit and open Figma in a new browser window (or force-quit the Figma Desktop app and restart it.)

If this does not resolve your issue, are you able to share a screen recording with me, so I can ask internally for help. We use these videos to try and reproduce the issue in our own files and so showing all steps needed to reproduce the behavior is helpful.

Hey @Gayani_S thanks so much for getting back to me! It’s not a machine issue and is happening to several teammates on different machines - here’s a bunch more context in the recording, let me know if I can send anything else your way to help!

Hey @Taylor_Rubes, apologies for the delayed response! Thank you for the screen recording this is very helpful, let me reach out to the team internally. I’ll get back to you as soon as I get more information.

I appreciate your patience in the meantime!

Thanks @Gayani_S ! I have our Figma wizard also trying it on our side, let me ask her to Vimeo record so I can also send that your way in case it helps!

@Gayani_S video from teammate having same issue – Troubleshooting Command X Process 🛠️ | Loom

second try: Moving Master Component 🚀 | Loom

Hey @Taylor_Rubes, apologies for the delayed response! Thank you for sharing the screen recordings with me.

I’ve got the following information from the Team:

This does not sound expected BUT there are two things that can cause it:

• The component is unpublished / not up to date because:
• There are conflicts on the component set (indicated by a warning or (!) icons on any component props in the Properties panel)
• It has unpublished updates or is not set to public.
• The file you’re pasting into includes instances of that component (this seems to have some additional nuance, maybe that there’s an instance that needs updates, but I’m still confirming those details).

If you’re seeing it any time you move a component, even a new component which has been published, then this would likely indicate a bug. Please do let me know if this is your case, I can submit a support ticket on your behalf and share your screen recording with the support team.

Thanks,
Gayani

Hey @Gayani_S,

I’m going to take this back to my team, test it out, and we’ll be back with a reporting! Thanks so much!

Hey @Gayani_S, this only accounts for “libraries”, aka a published file that’s connected to other files. Does that mean that support was dropped for moving without breaking in unpubished files that never get published? This seems to still be impacting our team when it comes to moving local components.

Noting this WAS possible before the Figma June updates.

Hey @Taylor_Rubes, let me know if this video is helpful. There are a few steps to publishing and accepting library updates that are required to successfully move a main component from one file to another.

There has never been support for moving unpublished components. The closest thing I could think of is if you are pasting instances from the same file into a different one. Those will still have a reference to the main component without publishing, but will not receive any updates from the main component.

Hey @Tom_Lowry appreciate the context!

There must have been a loophole before the June updates because we had at least 5 people on our team who was able to do this before, including myself.

The way our design system works is we have component libraries, but sometimes when components get meshed together, they are only kept in local files because they don’t cross the entire platform.

The problem now is when those components grow to needing to be put into a library, we can no longer do that and keep connections, we have to manually fix every single place that component was in prior. This has hurt how our team is functioning and added way more tedious time to our plates to just move items without breaking connections.

Confirming moving works in libraries, but why would you all not support moving local items without breaking it? Huge pain point, is there somewhere I can submit an enhancement request? This is going to add hours of work to our plates that would have been seconds before.

note - we are in 2 migrations, so I don’t think this will be needed later, but while we’re migrating to Figma AND migrating design systems, it’s a major problem

Wanna validate @Taylor_Rubes to say that cutting/pasting unpublished master components from one file to another was 100% possible previously because it was a key part of our workflow.