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 😞