Option to create new master component when duplicating a page or copy/paste

When I duplicate a page, any master component on that page gets translated to an instance of the master component on the new page.

Is there a way to duplicate a page and create new master components on the new page? i.e. Page A has master component 1 and 2. When I duplicate Page A and create Page B, I want master component 3 and 4 rather than instances of component 1 and 2.

I realize I can detach the instance and create a new master component but for my use case, that is a lot of components to:

a) detach
b) make edits
c) re create new master components
d) go through each instance on the page and update it to use the new master component.

I’d rather:

a) make edits to new master components
b) have instances automagically reflect the changes.

Thanks in advance for ur help

I have the exact same problem. This seems to be a bug. Only duplicating the entire file maintains the master and instance relationships… but that seems like quite a bother.

Any help Figma?

For some weird reason, this seems to affect mostly Master components without variants. Adding a variant to a component will make it duplicate across pages as expected, creating a new Master and not an instance.

Yeah it maintains the original relationship but it should actually belong to the copied page. Figma needs and update to fix this.

This is a major issue whenever I need to keep a version history via pages with prototype links for each version. Any changes to the original master component can lead to changes in some instances on duplicated pages, which prevents me from keeping versions entirely within one file.

Hopefully Figma can address this and make it so that duplicated pages copy each master component, instance, and connection between them separate from the original page

Same Issue. I tried to copy my wireframe to make my hifi design it was a pain to redo the components while trying to maintain the versions.

This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.

I know this is an old topic but Figma hasn’t changed, and I just found this workaround by @Joanna6 :

It’s a slight variation on @Natasa 's solution above. Basically:

1. Duplicate file.
2. Create new page in original file.
3. Copy/paste all page contents from duplicate file back into new page in original file.
4. Delete duplicated file.

It’s a bit tedious but it’s still way better than recreating new main components and relinking all the instances of the duplicated page to the new main component, which is what I’ve been doing. I’ll now use this workaround to get the result I need.

Hi there ! If anyone is still looking for a solution, i just created a plugin to duplicate a main component without loosing the properties : https://www.figma.com/community/plugin/1327218395978172272/duplicate-main-component

Contributions to improve Duplicate Main Component are welcome !

Crazy that after years we still haven’t a clean workflow to iterate with new main components for each new versions of a draft design.

I do something like this, which doesn’t necessitate creating a new document.

Use Component Master Manager plugin to move all existing components to a new page. You can choose which pages you want to pull components from.
I have found that it has not been updated to move components with variants, which kind of sucks, but I just cut and paste those to the new created components page as well.

Then, I duplicate the ‘Design R2’ page and create a ‘Design R3’ page.
Then, I use the Destroyer plugin to destroy all Instances and Styles on Design R2, so it becomes like an ‘archived’ version the client can have a link to. Meanwhile Design R3 is still connected to the original components, so I can keep editing away without messing up the now archived R2.

I have found that this preserves prototype links for the most part. A couple might drop off here and there.

Hope this helps anyone.

I have the same issue, and the initial suggestion in this post didn’t work for me. I got an error when right clicking on a component instance and selecting “Go to Main Component”. Assuming it’s because I deleted the duplicated file.

I don’t want to have to use a plugin.

Check out this thread here: 

Here’s what I did to get around this:

1. Duplicate the FILE
2. Copy the content of the entire page in the duplicate file
3. Paste the content into the original file

It pasted everything and created new main components (not instances)