Having this same issue… 
All I am doing is exporting a basic wireframe. First time using figma- this is so extremely frustrating! I am using Figma browser on windows
Try going to the 3 dots on the export and untick the ignore overlapping layers option
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This is extremely frustrating!
This is a basic functionality of any design software!
It is ridiculous that Figma has such a broken PDF export! It randomly misses pictures and in larger exports you literally don’t know what is missing, since there is no error message or anything indicating that something went wrong or that it had a memory issue!
You have to check everything and figure out whether or not it just skipped something somewhere – which in 20+ frames with pictures ALWAYS happens and is also not solvable…
Not even to mention that we don’t have ways to export compressed PDFs in any way on top of that.
The only solution I’ve found is the Plugin “Pitchdeck Presentation Studio” which has none of these issues and shows that it is definitely possible to have a working PDF-Export in Figma. It also allows 150dpi/300dpi exports and it never drops pictures… however after 10 exports they want 230$ per year just for a basic functionality → exporting my work to pdf! This is insane!
(well the plugin can do more than that, but if you just need to be able to export a pdf this price is ridiculous!)
Figma needs to urgently fix this!
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How do you export frames manually?
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So I found a workaround to the missing elements issue when you export your Figma design to PDF.
Add a section behind the designs you want captured. You can access sections:
- Region Tools
- Select - Section (Shift + S)
Then add the section behind the design(s) you want to capture. Once you do this - it should appear on the PDF when you export it.
Happy designing!
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So after reading through the whole thread and trying out all the different methods, unfortunately nothing worked for me. However, I did learn that the element that was causing the problems was outside the page layers. To check for this you can click the element you are having problems with and make sure its within a page layer in your layers, panel. Hopefully this helps!
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Hi! Can you please explain where to find “Region Tools”?? My PDFs are still not exporting all of my elements properly. Yugh!
I used keyboard shortcut Shift + S, and was able to create a “Section”. I “send it to back” so it would be underneath all of my design elements, but the PDF still did not include all of my buttons and text. What am I doing wrong?
I tried Pitchdeck, but even the ‘preview’ before exporting to PDF still showed several of my buttons missing from my frames. Has Figma really never fixed this for this many years!?
I have found Tiny Image Compressor PDF export to be reliable. However this plugin costs.
I do not think anyone should have to pay money to export designs. This is a basic function that literally every other platform I’ve ever used gets right. I am new to Figma (within last 3 days), but I really don’t understand why Figma hasn’t fixed this?? Seems like this feature has never worked on their platform.
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I figured out what my issue was when I wasn’t seeing my PNGs when exporting to PDF. For me, I didn’t realize my PNGs where not IN my frame that I needed them to be in. Upon putting them in the correct frame and bringing them to the front, I was able to have them export properly. I hope this help if it is a ‘user error’ like it was for me.
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Yes! This ended up being my issue as well (user error). I was originally trained on Adobe Illustrator, where everything that is “visually” on your frame (or ‘artboard’ as they call it there), gets exported no matter what. In Figma, even if an item is “visually” on your frame, if it is ‘free-floating’ on the left hierarchy chart and not actually a sub-item of the frame itself that you actually want it to appear on, it will not be exported on that frame.
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I am glad it helped! I am new-ish to Figma. Transitioning from other apps and thought the same. I wanted to share my solve even if it isn’t the same for others. It was embarrassing to me to hand over a PDF missing content! 
I had this issue. I found that I had two vectors, and when I flattened them, the pdf export issue was resolved.
I had to do this thru trial and error. I started at the top of the layer list and flattened the vectors I found. Luckily these vectors were some of the first I tried.
I hope this helps others.
The main problem is that Figma will not properly export Frames that have ‘Clip content’ enabled when exporting to PDF. When exporting to SVG this does work.
The frames with ‘clip content’ become clipping masks in the PDF but the way it’s exported is incorrect so the entire element becomes visible.
Workarounds:
- Find your frame in Figma and disable ‘clip content’. But this is not always possible because most times this is enabled for a reason
- Export to PDF and open in Illustrator to remove the faulty clipping mask layer
- Export to SVG and then open in Illustrator to save as PDF.
Ideal solution:
- good Figma PDF export where frames with ‘clip content’ are exported as clipping masks that have proper mask visibility in the resulting PDF
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So to everyone struggling with the problem of images not showing up on your pdf export frame, here’s the solution I came up with, that worked for me:
- Make a frame (F) that fits your image
- Select frame + select auto layout
- Place image into the frame
Voila your image will appear on your pdf. Goodluck.
Worked for me!
If you have duplicate elements one on top of the other (you may not realise as these perfectly overlap) then when you download in pdf, you will not see the original elements. Once you remove the duplicates/ overlapped ones, you should be able to see all the elements in downloaded pdf.
Just adding a comment to pump the topic. Please deal with this masks issue when exporting PDFs, Figma.