Variables referencing another file

Hi there,

I’m building a UI kit and I recently had a whole collection of 100s of component-level variables (color, spacing etc) deleted by Figma and I had to revert to an old file (file 1). Before I did that, I made a copy of my current file (file 2) to preserve recent component updates.

After I restored file 1 with the component variable collection in it, I copied the more up to date components from file 2 into file 1.

The issue now is that all the variables (and there are a lot of them) in file 1 are referencing file 2. It’s extremely laborious to manually switch the references for every component token. Is there a plugin that could do the job for me? I tried the swap feature of the Variables Pro plugin, but that didn’t seem to do much.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Hamish

Hey @Hamish_Unified, sorry to hear this happened!

There are plugins in the community that may help. Here’s an example:

Im really curious to hear how Figma deleted your variables. :slight_smile:

Hi @dvaliao,

Thanks for the response. This plugin doesn’t seem to work as it’s for reattaching instances, rather than re-linking variables to a master component.

@Guy_Meyer1, I would also like to know this! I guess it’s a reminder that variables is still in BETA. I just noticed that suddenly all my colour variables weren’t linked to anything on my components.

Thanks,
Hamish

Thanks for clarifying and sorry for the oversight!

Sadly, it doesn’t look like there’s plugin with this capability. Any other existing re-link plugins we can see are also for instances.

I’m having the same issue right now. I have fixed all my “Missing Libraries” in my design system using a plugin. But my variables are still referencing those old missing libraries. There isn’t a way to replace them with new library styles (when I click on “All Libraries” there is no option to select a different library).

I think I may have to completely delete the variables. For the current project they aren’t really doing much for me anyway.