LAUNCHED: Copy/Move variable groups into other collections

I too just hit this. I have tokens in another collection linked up that I now realise I need to move to a different collection as they’ve grown

This is really needed.

Same here, I am actually going through the deep dive session from yesterday and ran into that issue. Great intro in variables though, thanks Ricky & Garrett!

Currently, when you copy an element that has variables applied, the pasted version does not carry over the defined variables. If I want to reuse the variables, I have to set them again.

Hey there, as we all are excited about these new features, I wonder if it can be possible to change a variable’s collection after creating one.

Since all of these are new, we are experimenting to find the best practice for organizing variables, sometimes we decide to change our system to make a better one. This option can help to get things even faster 😃

Update: splitting a collection would be also a great help if my previous request has some implementation challenges. Only if we could move some parts of a Collection into a new Collection. (or maybe, turning a group into a collection)

What do you think?

I guess it will be a conflict between modes, as every collection have a different list of modes.

oh, Yes I didn’t consider that while I was posting this. yeah of course. thanks

Good remark @Natalie_Doronina , but maybe we can imagine a way to move from collection to collection, warning the user he will lose the mode information if a mismatch, or a UI to do vairable mode values mapping from collection to collection.

The UI is not perfect, and at first we don’t identify collection very well, so I think after discovering in a second step the collection feature, many users will wish to move their existing variables to collections.

That’d also be great if we could move variables from one file to another.

Agreed! This is especially needed as we’re all getting acquainted with variables… as we figure out the best way to organize our systems, there will inevitably be a lot of organizing/reorganizing going on. We should be able to:

• move variables from one collection to another
• re-order modes
• move variables from one file to another
• move collections from one file to another

Same here. I made mistake and put my tokens and color modes in one collection and now it doesnt make sense to have modes for my greyscale and other shades. Aliases are already created 😕 so it would totaly make sense form me to move my token colors to new collection that doesnt have modes… 😕

@Michal_Krendzelak exactly. I think it could be also good if there were an option, to split a collection (instead of moving variables to some other collection) this way, the challenge of different value settings would be gone, and help us to reshape our system

If you copy elements with variables over to another file they remain linked to their original variables which I would call intended and expect myself.

However, I would also like to be able to copy or move variables to another file. I thought it would work since you already are able to multi select them but there seems to be no copy or cut option yet.

See:

I have a screen with 5 buttons in it, all with variables. I was able to copy/paste the screen to another file and all of the variables carried over. When I copy/paste the screen within the same file and same page, all of the variables were cleared out. This might be a bug? This behavior makes no sense.

Yes exactly, while it may be considered a learning curve, many of us are setting this thing up and it really annoys we’re not able to move variables to another collection in order to split up or (re)group things.

Also not being able to batch copy and or bulk rename variables is a big bummer.

I understand this is a needed feature, but as a workaround, you can use plug-ins to export the JSON structure, change it, and import it back, while moving between collections is not implemented natively. There even are some web-based WYSWYG tools that will show a JSON file structured as tree view so you can move nodes arround.

I’d like this too.

i want to be able to copy and paste variables from file to another file, this will save alot of time

I’d love to be able to move variables to another collection. I’m several hours in and I’ve realised that I’ve created and mapped several dozen variables that should be in a separate collection which is a nightmare.

Love this new feature but being able to manage collections would be fantastic.

I need this as well.

Yes, I’d appreciate moving and duplicating groups, collections and variables, to organize them.

Agress this would be super useful. I’m not sure how you copy/map a variable/group to a different collection that potentially has different modes to the original collection. But there’s surely a way!

Also need this.

we neeed this

By mistake i also added some of variable to different collection and didn’t fond option to move other collection which i have