Copy/Move variable groups into other collections

This is 100% needed, otherwise there is a lot of manual work, especially with lots of variables. This would make things more efficient.

Pitching in to show my support.
The state of the variables modal management is just the worst and with very few steps would be enhanced greatly, for example:

• Allow to move variables to other collections within the file
• Allow to reorder existing collections
• Allow to search within the variables modal
• Allow to “fix” broken links within variables (similar to how “missing fonts” is fixes)
• Allow to filter the variables table for broken link
• Import and export of variable tables as some standardised format like CSV
• Allow to migrate variables to other files!

And i am sure there are many more amazing ideas people raised in this thread

I highly agree with this. I desperately needed to avoid so much extra and unnecessary work. It should be a relatively simple feature to implement, too, and would be very valuable!

Hey Figma,

Is there any update on this or anything from the Variable’s team. It’s been several months, with new posts appearing every day or so requesting this. I’m personally at the point where I need to start looking for another solution and abandon variables all together because they’re simply too complex to manage with the no variable management tools provided. Please provide an update.

+1 please! Really needed

For anyone watching this, check out today’s release notes. Copying/pasting variables is now available. Still a little buggy (it isn’t remembering the initial layout, and I can’t just copy and past the group yet.) But this a very needed feature and I am happy it’s getting some attention.

Hey All,

@Tara_Price2 is correct! We launched this feature today:

Was extatic to see this in the release, but tested it first thing this morning, and it doesn’t respect any folder structure at all and puts every variable in one group. So in a tested instance, I copied the following:

Copied
text/default/default 1
text/default/default 2
text/inverse/default 1
icon/default/default 1
icon/default/default 2

Pasted
default 5
default 4
default 1
default 3
default 2

Order, names, folders all gone awry. Not even something we can use as a base to work from in all honesty, especially when you’re working with hundreds of variables across multiple brands.

There’s also a bug where it’s creating new empty collections when pasting between file. Even if it’s the collection is named the same.

Hey @Sean_Leahy and @Tara_Price2, thanks for flagging!

We’ll pass this feedback onto our Variables team to investigate. Are either of you able to share an example file or screen recording?

If you’re not able to share your file publicly, please submit a bug report to our technical quality team directly via the form here: https://help.figma.com/hc/en-us/requests/new