Some color variables will not publish

I have a design library with multiple color variable. I’ve published all colors for our local team to use in their design files and for the longest time, all color variables were available for use inside these design files. But recently (past month or so) some colors are not appearing inside the design files. As in, they do not make themselves present during a Fill, Stroke, nor Text color selection effort. I also noticed I’m unable to nudge these variable (change color, name, etc) in order to trip the library into including them for publishing. It’s as if they don’t exist—even though they do in the library.

Column 1 Column 2
Name
Primary-050 E6E9F5
Primary-100 C1C9E7
Primary-200 98A6D6
Primary-300 6E84C6
Primary-400 4C69BB
Primary-500 244FAF
Primary-600 1D47A6
Primary-700 103E9A
Primary-800 00358E
Primary-900 002379

Specifically, variables “Primary-050” through “Primary-300” are being ghosted (ignored) by Figma publishing. While “Primary-400” through “Primary-900” are fully recognized, will publish when modified, and appear in all design files. Also, none of these are selected to be hidden during publish.

What’s wrong? Is anyone else experiencing this issue?

I’m going to try (frustrating as it may be) to delete and recreate these variables (050-300).

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Oh my goodness! So embarrassing! These colors (050-300) were being hidden. I’ve now un-hidden and the changes are able to publish. For the first time ever, I noticed that I can click on the variable collection during the publish screen (I think you have to make an adjustment to the variable collection to make it present in the publish screen). This navigated me to a child view of the collection variables, and I was able to see the four colors in hidden status.

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Hey @Cortney_Reber, glad to hear you figured out the hidden colors!

Please let us know if you run into any further issues.

im having this same issue but none of my colors are hidden

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Hey @Shane_Troggio, Thank you for bringing this to our attention!

I want to make sure I understand the situation correctly. It seems like you’re having trouble accessing some color variables from a library that has already been added to your design file. Additionally, these colors are not appearing in the Hidden section on the Publish library modal when published.

If that’s the situation, could you please try making a minor change to that color in the library (such as adding a brief description), then publish the updates? Accept the library updates in a subscribed file, and then go back to the library, undo the minor change you made, and publish it again.

If the above doesn’t help, could you please contact our support team directly through this link: https://help.figma.com/hc/en-us/requests/new? To investigating further, kindly provide the following information:

  1. Please ensure you use your Figma account email address.
  2. Share file links and add support-share@figma.com as an Editor to those files (this won’t impact your billing):
    • The working file where the color variables from the library are not displaying.
    • The library file containing those color variables.

If the above does not apply to your situation, please provide more details so we can assist you better. It would be extremely helpful if you could share a video recording of the issue you’re facing with a explanation!

If I missed anything, please let us know. Looking forward to hearing from you soon.
Thank you so much for your help!

I have the same issue. I copied a number of colour variables to a new library file. Even when the “Hide from publishing” is unchecked, the variables which are shown as changed in the “Publish library” modal are under the Hidden section so they cannot be published.

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I was having this same issue and checked the hidden setting, made a slight change and published, all with out success. But then I realized that the scoping settings had been changed in the variables setting. So I was trying to use a color for an icon fill that was scoped specifically for text, so that’s why I couldn’t see it.

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Hi, I have the same issue and I can’t find a solution. I’ve created my variables directly inside my library file but I can’t publish them as they appear as hidden elements in the publishing panel even though the “hide for publishing” is unchecked for all my variable… Did you find a solution for this problem cause I’m stuck with this one?