Moving components doesn't work

Ask the community
1

I’ve got a project and two design files, A and B, that reside in it.

File A houses designs for an app. File B is added to it as its library.

I created a component in A and used it to create child components in A.
I want to move the component from A to B now, so that the child components in A link to the component in B as their parent component.

I have the professional plan, I have full ownership of the entire project (though only see myself as the owner of one of the design files when I go to its sharing settings). I’m copying and pasting exactly like Figma tells me to. No go. It used to work just fine a few days ago.

2

Hey @Konrad5, sorry to hear you’re having trouble moving components!

Where in the process are you getting stuck?

As a reminder, when you move published components between files, Figma will prompt you to publish your changes to any affected libraries.

You need to publish these changes to complete the move process. Figma will push updates to all subscribed files when you publish your changes.

  1. Click Publish in the notification, or use the shortcut to open the library modal:
  • Mac: ⌥ Option 3
  • Windows: Alt 3
  1. Figma lists any changes to the library, including every component you’ve moved to this file. For each component, choose to Move to this file or Publish as a copy.
  • Select Move to this file for all moved components. This makes sure Figma keeps connections between the main components and any existing instances.
  • Select Publish as copy to publish them as new main component. This will break the connection between the component and any instances, instances won’t receive further updates.

  1. Add a description of your changes, Figma shows this in the file’s version history.

  2. Click Publish to publish your changes to the library.

3

Hey @dvaliao , thanks for your reply.

So I publish the changes manually.

The component is listed as a new component - not a move and I don’t see an option to change it to move.

After I publish the library, I am not prompted to review the changes in the file that uses the library. If there are more changes to the library than just the cut/pasted component that I’m trying to move, it will list changes to be reviewed EXCEPT for the component that I’m trying to move into the library.

Moving components worked fine just a few days ago. I followed the exact same process then.

4

Thanks for the additional context! Can you share your files with us here? https://help.figma.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

Please use your Figma account email, include a link to the files, and share with support-share@figma.com, so we can take a closer look.

5

I’ve already created a ticket for it [#939224] on Monday, awaiting reply.

6

Thanks for that!

We’ve confirmed that the team has your ticket, will review the file, and reply as soon as they can.

7

Hi, I’m having the same issue. The option to move the component is greyed out, it only allows me to “Publish as a copy” do you have any insight on how this issue was solved?

8

After the ordeal of having to record my workflow and send it to Figma multiple times, only to prove to them that I am in fact capable of operating Figma and it is not my fault that the issue is happening, the support team was unable to provide a solution and they were unable to fix these broken components. The only thing you can do is recreate the components in their intended location which is what I ended up doing.

This is an ongoing issue that affects some components that will not behave as intended. So if you’re like me and you like to create your components outside of your library and then move them, I’m afraid the best thing to do for now is adjust your process.

1 Like
9

Just chiming in to say I am having the exact issue. I did find a solution with a Figma plugin that saved me hours of manually relinking (though it’s not free.)

My problem:

After successfully moving and publishing components from the “A” file to the “B” file (the new library) and updating the “A” file to remain linked, there were several components which, after cutting and pasting, publishing only offered to “add” to the B file rather than to “move” it (rendering all the instances of components from file A unlinked to their new location in file B).

What I did:
-I cut my components from file A, and pasted them as usual to file B.
-Publish my components in file B (marked as “added” since it won’t show up as “moved”)
-I used the Design Systems Organizer plug-in to relink every instance between the files (it relinked 180 instances in around 10 seconds)

Basically in the plugin, you can select your components in file B, and “mark as target”, then open up the plugin in file A and select “relink instances”. Hope this helps someone out there :sob: