Copy/Move variable groups into other collections

Yes, please!
I need to separate my core token from my semantic ones

Greetings Everyone,

I trust you’re all experiencing blessings.

Much like everyone here, I encountered a challenge. However, given that Figma currently lacks support for this particular feature, I devised a clever workaround. Please note that this approach is applicable in specific scenarios where the following steps have been set up:

Additional steps may be required, approximately 2-3 in total:

1. Ensure that your styles are associated with variables. Additionally, confirm that you have effectively organized most of the primitive and semantic colors within a nested structure.
2. Run the “Import/Export By Honza Toman” plugin.

• Export your existing variable collection to a JSON file.
• Modify the collection name within the JSON file.
• Import the modified JSON file using the same plugin, and voilà, your existing collection is now duplicated! ❤️

Enjoy the enhanced functionality!

Hi Saurabh,

I think that duplicating collection is not an issue. You can do the same with running plugins such as “Styles to Variables” or similar. You just need to run it, rename the collection and then run it again.

The issue that I am experiencing is that I want to separate Primitives and Semantic in different collections in the same Figma file. All my color styles live in the single Foundations file. With a help of plugins such as “Styles to Variables” I can easily create variables in a batch and automatically connect them with Color Styles. But, once you do any duplication (either with your approach or the one I described) you lose half of the connections, Primitives or Semantic, depending on which are going to be overwritten.

If anyone found a solution to this, please share 🙂

Please consider adding the ability to move a single variable or a group of variables from one collection to another. I’m working through how I want to try to organize these and not having the ability to move them makes it a lot harder as I’m figuring this out as I’m doing it.

Thanks for the feedback, @Kirk_Wheeler!

With variables still in beta, we’ll pass this onto our team for consideration as variables continue to evolve and grow.

Oh my god YES! This is a major thing that is missing…

This is a great workaround! Thanks for the suggestion.

Still out of votes, sadly, but +1 from me xD

I guess these are duplicates? @dvaliao

+1 from me

I’m surprised this wasn’t a feature at launch. This needs to be a feature!

I’ve already encountered quite a few instances across my team where variables needed to be moved and it’s not possible without exporting and re-importing. The issue is that it breaks the nested variables when using this workaround.

Has anyone come across a workaround/plugin that doesn’t break the nested variables or relinks the nested variables when collections are imported?