How do I remove a shared component whose original component is deleted?

Richard · February 5, 2021, 8:57pm

I deleted the original of a component but a reference to it remains in the Assets panel under “Used in this file”.

Dev Tools reports it as 404.
Trying to place it in a page results in the error message “You can’t add an instance of a shared component into the document from which the shared component was published if the original component was deleted.”
Wondering if anyone’s encountered this and if so, what steps can be taken to remove them from the Assets panel
Screen Shot 2021-02-05 at 3.26.22 PM532×1034 11.5 KB

Screen Shot 2021-02-05 at 3.41.56 PM550×1586 29.2 KB

Gleb · February 6, 2021, 1:03am

When you delete a component, it doesn’t detach its instances. So if you still have an instance of that component in the file, it will be shown in the “used in this file” section. You can find instances in the file using plugins like Instance Finder (however I’m not sure if it works when you can’t find one of the instances yourself).

Richard · February 6, 2021, 1:15am

Thanks for the response, Gleb. Yeah I’d tried the Instance Finder route but your instincts are correct. It seems you need to be able to find an instance in the file before the plugin can locate a match.

Gleb · February 6, 2021, 5:25am

You can also find objects by name, so if you know the name of the component it shouldn’t be hard. Plugins like Search & Focus, Find and Focus, Butler, Figma Walker can do that.

Richard · February 6, 2021, 5:53pm

Thanks again! Unfortunately none of those plugins were able to narrow down the instance. Through trial and error (deleting various components in which the ghost-components were likely to have been nested) I was able to narrow down the instance that was causing the problems. By deleting that master component, I can see that the broken links are deleted along with it. So I’ll simply rebuild that component, relink all references to the new one, and delete the problematic one. Thanks for your help, Gleb.