Child Symbols Missing from Parent Symbols

We have a situation where we have a parent symbol with several nested child symbols. The parent symbols are then arranged in a list. The parent symbol is stored in a library file.

What happens for some symbols is that in the scene files the parent symbols seem to lose the child symbols, and we are greeted with:

Looking at the layer tree, the parent symbols are all there, and they have child layers for the child symbols. However, there is nothing within the child symbol.

If we go to the parent symbol itself and replace one of the child symbols with the same symbol, that seems to reset the parent symbol. We can then update the components in the scene file, and they return. However, we also find that if we close and reopen the scene file, the missing symbol issue returns rather frequently.

What is the cause of this? Is it something with our practices, or is this a Sketch issue? Thanks.

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Yesterday I had the same issue.
I believe It was me cutting a symbol (but after seeing your post I think it may be just a bug).
Anyway, Sketch should track copy & paste of symbols and elements in general without loosing the relationships. Figma and XD can recreate symbols (components, actually) even if you delete the master. This is a must.

Hey @GordoFabulous

I’m sorry to read you’re experiencing this issue.

We would like to take a closer look to make sure we know what’s going on here. Do you mind sharing the library and the affected document with us, via our CS contact form? We’ll take a look as fast as possible.

Can you also let us know in the CS form if this issue is reproducible in any other document with these symbols from that library? Or is it’s just that document.

Thanks.

We have actually fixed all of the current issues and haven’t been able to reproduce it. If it happens again, I will be sure to get the files involved.

For some more information:

The Missing Symbol on the lower left hand side and the symbols across the screenshot are two different symbols, but both have the same construction. The symbol is a “Master” symbol that contains a number of individual visual state symbols. (We process the Sketch file in a proprietary program to develop the UI code that we need for our main program.)

SymbolCategory/SymbolName/Master
SymbolCategory/SymbolName/State1
SymbolCategory/SymbolName/State2
…

The library that both of the symbols come from was recently reorganized. Mostly that was just reordering the page they are on in alphabetical order. However, the lower left symbol was also renamed and reconstructed. To do that, we created a new artboard and copy-pasted the guts of the original symbol into that one. (We need to keep the old ones around until they can be updated in each of the files that use them.)

It was after the reorganization that we started seeing this issue.

As I said, replacing one of the state symbols with the same symbol resolved it. If I can think of any other specific steps, I will let you know. If you need us to try some repro steps, we can do that as well.

Also, I noticed that I neglected to add the version information. Currently, we are on Version 94.1.

Thanks!