Is there a way to 'unsymbol' an artboard in sketch?

Question

I'm working in versions and I just created a duplicate of my symbols page and renamed it 'Symbols v1'. I now have a page called 'Symbols' and 'Symbols v1'.

The problem I'm having is that I want to keep all the art work for the symbols in 'Symbols v1' but I don't want them to show up as symbols in the insert menu.

Is there a way to do this or a plugin that will let me manage symbols better?

Answer 1

Select the artboard/symbol, go to: Layer → Convert Symbol to Artboard.

Answer 2

The only way to do this currently (Aug 2016) is to delete the page than contains the items you want to remove symbol status from.

When you do this, Sketch automatically detaches all used instances from their symbols and turns them back into regular artwork.

I am assuming that, similarly, if you delete a single artboard on the Symbols page, all instances of that symbol will be detached and converted into regular artwork again.

Answer 3

Short answer: Partly! Batch-rename to prefix with a folder.

There are ways to do this (March 2017), although none are as simple as making symbols "unavailable" in the menu.

The simplest way (in my mind) would be to rename your "old" symbols to Archived/[Layer name], which will put them all in a single group while keeping them as symbols.

You can use "Z - Archived" or something similar if you want to push them at the bottom of the list.

Here's my suggested way for batch-renaming your layers in little time.

• Install the RenameIt plugin

• Go to your "Symbols V1" artboard.

• Select all symbols

• Plugins → Rename It → Rename Selected Layers

• Prefix your names with a folder. I'm using Z - Archive/*. The * resolves to the current layer name.