Troubleshooting CopyDoc

Troubleshooting guide for CopyDoc exports, imports, and font or spreadsheet issues.

Microsoft Word line height exceeding the height of a text layer ​

If your text layer has a large line height (that exceeds the height of the text layer itself), your text will be pushed down in the Microsoft Word (.docx) export.

Google Sheets converting 'ID' column to numbers ​

When importing a CSV file into Google Sheets, please ensure you uncheck the Convert text to numbers, dates and formulas checkbox, otherwise your Figma IDs will be modified and messed up, which means they won't be able to be imported properly back into Figma.

Any Figma layers with a missing font can't be replaced, updated or spell checked ​

If your Figma text layer contains a missing font, the plugin won't be able to update it. Please ensure any text layers you would like to update in any way using the CopyDoc plugin have their missing fonts resolved.

Error when trying to export Figma comments ​

If you're using a valid Figma API token in a Figma file that has comments, but you're seeing an error message saying that the token is invalid, your ISP is likely blocking the API request to fetch Figma comments; so you will likely need to use a VPN to resolve the issue.

DOCX file exports aren't optimized for Google Docs ​

If you're exporting your Figma designs to .docx, Open them in Microsoft Word, as some features won't be supported in Google Docs.

Google Sheet URL not loading ​

When connecting a spreadsheet to CopyDoc, you must use a native Google Sheets document, not an Excel (.xlsx) file uploaded to Google Drive.

The Difference:

  • Native Google Sheets - Created directly in Google Sheets
  • Google Drive XLSX - Excel files uploaded to or created in Google Drive

While both look nearly identical in the Google interface, only native Google Sheets work with CopyDoc's integration.

If you have an XLSX file in Google Drive that you want to use with CopyDoc:

  1. Open the XLSX file in Google Drive
  2. Click File → Save as Google Sheet
  3. In the new Google Sheets document, click Share
  4. Set permissions to Anyone with the link can view
  5. Copy the new URL and paste it into CopyDoc

Tip: You can identify an XLSX file by the small "XLSX" badge indicator in the Google Drive interface.

Some elements are missing and turning into purple rectangles when exporting PDF from Figma ​

This is a known Figma bug that can show purple boxes instead of images. CopyDoc uses Figma's native PDF export, so the same problem can appear in CopyDoc exports.

One suggestion that can help is to ensure the problematic layer is actually nested inside of the main Figma frame, as sometimes a Figma layer is "visually" positioned on top of your frame on the canvas, but the layer itself is still sitting outside of the frame; this seems to be related to why the problem occurs sometimes.

Slow PDF exports ​

If your PDF exports are going really slow, it's likely due to having high-res/large image fills in some of the content, which causes Figma to take a much longer time generating PDFs. To help with this issue, you can use the "Downsizer" feature in TinyImage to shrink down your image fills to match their layer size, which will shrink their file size and ensure they load much faster in your Figma file. Once you've finished downsizing the image fills in your Figma page, re-running CopyDoc and exporting your PDF again via the plugin should be much faster.

Editing PDFs in Adobe Acrobat shows dotted lines ​

This can be resolved by un-checking the "Show bounding boxes" toggle in the Acrobat Acrobat app sidebar while editing your PDF. Showing the dotted bounding box lines is something that Adobe enables by default while enter "Edit" mode when you have a PDF open in the app, but turning off the "Show bounding boxes" toggle will turn hide those from being displayed with one click.

Opening CSV files with unicode characters in Microsoft Excel ​

Microsoft Excel requires you to use the built-in Import Wizard to import the CSV if your text contains unicode characters (for example, if your content is in Polish or Russian or has certain accented characters). Note that other spreadsheet software like Apple Keynote and Google Sheets doesn't require you to do this, and you can open the CSV file normally in those apps. To do this in Microsoft Excel, you can create a brand new Excel file, click on the Data tab in the Excel header, select the From Text button, browse for the exported .csv that CopyDoc exported, then select UTF-8 as the file origin; then confirm to import the file into Excel as expected. To save the edited file, selecting the CSV UTF-8 (Comma-delimited) (*.csv) option should preserve the unicode characters (instead of swapping them out as question marks with a normal CSV file).

Blank file extensions using Figma desktop app on Windows ​

There's a known issue with the Figma desktop app (only on Windows), which also happens for normal file exports from Figma. When you go to save your file, you may see an "all files" label. If you ignore this and continue by clicking "Save", it should still save the file with the correct extension and allow you to open it as expected after it has downloaded to your computer. If it still saves the file with a blank extension, you should be able to rename the file to manually append the correct extension to the file name.

Pixelated image exports ​

If you're exporting design references or exporting a PDF/DOCX while the image assets in Figma are still progressively loading, they may be exported looking pixelated, as the image wasn't fully loaded in the Figma file before it was exported. To resolve this, please ensure that all of the images have loaded 100% and are looking sharp inside the Figma file before re-exporting with the CopyDoc plugin. To help further with solving this issue, you can use the "Downsizer" feature to shrink down your image fills to match their layer size, which will shrink their file size and ensure they load much faster in your Figma file.

VPN may be required in China ​

Note, if you're in China, the accounts server may be blocked by "The Great Firewall of China". If you're seeing an activation error, despite using a valid key, you will likely need to use a VPN to resolve the issue.

'An error occurred while loading the plugin environment' ​

This may happen in the Figma desktop app if the Use Developer VM debug setting in Figma is enabled by mistake; you can make sure it's turned off by right-clicking anywhere on your Figma canvas, hovering over Plugins, then hovering over Development, and making sure that the Use Developer VM is unchecked; after it is unchecked (and does not have a tick icon next to it), re-running the Figma plugin should work as expected.

More CopyDoc help ​