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Inspiring
Apr 3, 2021 8:58 PM UTC
Question

Remove parenting relationships?

I've messed up my animaetion-- everything is skewed. Starting over. Anybody know how to remove parenting relationships?

    9 replies

    watercolorplanther
    Participant
    Jun 10, 2025 2:10 PM UTC

    Amazing, it's 2025 and it's still an issue, unfixed.

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    Mario_CR
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    Jun 10, 2025 7:57 PM UTC

    Someone shared with me a JSFL command to remove the parenting of all layers in a document. This is the best workaround we have atm:

    https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qbMk2PjdpYCouvS0uAx9Bw9ZIkzlnVtp/view?usp=drive_link

    To use it, paste the jsfl file at following location: C:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Local\Adobe\Animate <version>\<language>\Configuration\Commands

    Restart Animate and check the Commands menu. It should appear there.

     

    (Note: If you get a javascript error after running it, just ignore it).

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    Participating Frequently
    Sep 7, 2024 1:51 AM UTC

    I found an easy way to accomplish this. Turns out copying frames only copies the frames themselves, and not the parenting relationships. So if you have a symbol inside which there exists a lot of parenting relationships between layers, you simply need to make a new document, paste your symbol into the new document, click into the symbol, select all frames across all layers and copy, then go back to your original symbol in the original document and replace all its frames by pasting in the copied version. The pasted frames may be exactly the same, but parenting relationships will all be gone across all pasted keyframes. 

    In my case, I need to parent some layers for easy of classic tween animation. Once I've finished animating a parent layer (and its children layers have all followed the parent's motion), I insert keyframes in the children layers corresponding those in the parent layer, do the copy & paste process to remove parenting, and I end up with all children layers still animated according to the parent's motion, except there are no more parenting relationships! 

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    Participant
    Nov 30, 2022 9:50 AM UTC

    I just figured out that when you press on the child's parenting line, there is something pops out and choose remove parent. 

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    kglad
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    Apr 4, 2021 2:42 PM UTC

    you can copy/paste:

     

    objects (all or some) on stage

    symbols in your library, 

    timeline frames (all or some) from any symbol

    layers (all or some) from any timeline

     

    so if you want to unparent the objects on the timeline of ggp1.gp1.p1, copy the p1 layers (shift-click) and paste into a new symbol (eg p2). 

     

    if you want to delete the children of gp1 (without deleting the p1 asset from your project), duplicate p1 and delete p1.

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    K7S
    Inspiring
    Oct 20, 2022 9:44 PM UTC

    Hi, I was trying to accomplish this today by copy pasting the layers and frames but each time I've tried the parenting relations remain. Is there a way to remove them all without doing it individually? I would like to keep my folder structure and naming convention.

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    Mario_CR
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    Oct 21, 2022 12:38 AM UTC

    There is no such option at the moment; individually is the only way.

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