Hey there,

Could you try exporting the vector as an SVG from Illustrator and then importing it into Figma, rather than copying and pasting? This might resolve the issue. You can find more detailed guidance in our Help Center article here: Copy assets between design tools.

Here’s another thread with additional workarounds that might be helpful for you:

If the problem persists, please reach out to the support team for further assistance here.

Be sure to use your Figma email account and share the SVG you imported into Figma. If possible, also include a quick video demonstrating how you copy the vector from Illustrator and how it pastes as an image instead. Thank you!

Hi Celine, thanks for the response! No this is not an acceptable solution. Exporting then importing a file is way less efficient than a simple copy/paste. This is a high traffic workflow so it needs to be efficient. Copying and pasting a vector is a rudimentary task that professional grade design software must support out of the box - no fiddling with configuration.

Adobe has a nearly quarter trillion dollar market cap. For a company of this caliber, it needs to be better with the UX of basic tasks.

I just noticed a ‘Ask the community’ tag on this thread. If I want this reported as a needed improvement, should I repost this as a ‘Share an idea’ post?

Thank you for sharing your feedback—I completely understand your frustration.

We’ll pass this along to our internal team for consideration. I’ve also updated your topic to ‘Share an Idea’. Thank you!

Thanks so much, Celine! 😃

In Illustrator > Preferences > Clipboard Handling do you have “Include SVG Code” checked? I’ve copied vectors from Illustrator and pasted into Figma for as long as I can remember.

Yes, I have that setting checked.

An observation if helpful: If I delete all text elements in Illustrator, the remaining elements will copy/paste correctly into Figma.

That was my followup… whether you had any text objects in Illustrator that hadn’t been converted to outlines. 😁

There’s text in the document, but even if I copy just the vector object (without selecting the text), it pastes into Figma as a raster image. That wasn’t happening before. Deleting all the text objects from the document works fine.

You can copy the Illustrator vector object and paste it into Figma as a vector object when there is no text object in the Illustrator file. If there is a text object in the Illustrator file, then no matter whether you copy the text object or not, the vector object will be pasted as a raster image. This is a new issue that requires fixing.

What you need to do is:
Go to illustrator / preferences / Clipboard Handling / Mark “Include SVG Code” and Unmark PDF.

I was having the same issue and tried everything mentioned here without results, then I just selected the object in illustrator and went to Object > Expand Appearance then I tried again and it worked! I also instead of grouping it I use pathfinder to united and simplify vector structures, Hope this helps!

Unfortunately I’m having this issue as well. Yesterday, Copy from Illustrator → Paste into Figma was working perfectly, but today it’s no longer pasting as vectors.

I’ve tried all of the suggestions in this thread (clipboard preferences, ungrouping, expand appearance, restarting apps etc.) with no luck. It just keeps coming through as a PNG.

Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

This was happening to me as well. To paste a vector from illustrator, make sure that you aren’t posting it into any frame or grouping or component. Just the path onto the pasteboard. Then you can get that vector and paste it into more complex structures.

I recommend deleting the text object from the document entirely or simply expanding everything to paste it as a vector object in Figma.

I’m having this issue as well, like others above, my clipboard settings are set to include SVG code in Illustrator, I have no other text in the document, it’s set in RGB, no gradients or fancy effects and I have expanded the stroke into a shape. No matter what it keeps being pasted as a raster image. 

This is the second time this problem happens to me. The first time I fixed it through the «include svg» check in Illustrator. Then, a few days later, Illustrator had an update and it has since stopped working again.