Hey Eva,

Happy to help 😊

1. 
   

   “I started off with what I made on the left which turned into variants on the right. The ‘parents’ seem to be disconnected now so if I change the colour to orange it doesn’t update on the rest?” : You have overriden your instance (by switching with an orange rectangle) but not the main component, so it would not update it. If you want to update automatically in “orange” you have to update directly into your main component with variants (the component on the right).
   
   You can find more information in this guide: How to apply override to instances

   
   


2. 
   

   “Also inside the component set I created variants from the drop down menu in open state. This also however doesn’t update when say I change the colour?”
   
   Not sure which part of your variant you want to change the color. If you want to change the color of the months when you hover them, you have to change the colour in the main component.
   
   Here a quick video recording:
   
   

   
   
   
   


3. 
   

   "This is how the tutorial set up the component.The instance has a square bracket around it

   
   

"

This square is the absolute position feature, this feature excludes an object from an auto layout flow while keeping it in the auto layout frame. The object and its surrounding siblings ignore each other, even as they resize and move.

You can find more information on it in this guide: Explore auto-layout properties

Hope this helps!