On Friday I spent a great deal of care creating a system of variables and applying it to new frames. When I open the file today I can see the created frames, and the correct values applied to an object’s properties, but it’s not referring the variable. The value is greyed out, and when I open the variables panel, there’s one collection of variables I had from before, but not the one I created on Friday.
I tried restoring older versions, but the issue remains.
I tried opening it in the browser, but the issue remains.
Any help to shed a light on this will be so appreciated!
Is everything in the same file? What you’re seeing is what is shown when you delete a variable. The good thing is that it’s easy to replace missing variables, but the bad thing is that I haven’t found a good way to document them for exactly this case. My files are really big and sometimes I have to quit and restart for some things to behave. I hope there will be improvements on tooling for theming.
Yes, and the file is actually not that complex. How do you mean replacing a missing variable? Going one by one?
I wish I had looked for a plugin to export variables for safe keeping 
I also tried re-creating a deleted variable with the same name and structure, but Figma won’t fetch it…
I have also just started experiencing this. Has anyone heard anything from Figma support or seen anything in the release notes? I haven’t, but I can’t say I’ve seen everything they’ve released notes on. Thanks!
Hey Phillip,
Sorry to hear you are having issue with the collection of variables.
As a first workaround, can you first check your file’s version history, the collection can be restored from there.
If not, please reach out directly to the support team by filling a form here: https://help.figma.com/hc/en-us/requests/new
Be sure to use your Figma account email, include links to the file, and share it with support-share@figma.com so they can take a closer look. They may be able to restore it. Thank you
Can’t believe I just experienced this too. After hours of painstakingly creating tokens with the Figma variables, everything just disappeared unexplainably 
Restoring older versions doesn’t work, I restored several. The variables and all the work are simply missing.
Figma, please now 