Remove parenting relationships?

[GraphicsGeezer]

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

[kglad]

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.

[K7S]

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.

[Mario_CR]

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

[K7S]

Roger that... what's the more basic method of accomplishing this? I had some luck putting all the layers into a symbol/movieclip and then breaking that symbol/moveclip apart in the correct position on the canvas. Is there a better work around?

[Mario_CR]

Using "break apart" on a nested symbol does remove parenting, but you lose all your keyframes and layers in the process; symbols end up misplaced on a single layer on the stage. To put each symbol into individual layers again you could select the symbols, right click and choose "distribute to layers" then rearrange every symbol into their proper position.

If you're starting from scratch, and can work with that, it may be the best option. Even turning off advanced layers doesn't work, as the parent/child hierarchy remains (which it shouldn't).

[Hui27359908sjrl]

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

[hugh3540]

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! 

[watercolorplanther]

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

[Mario_CR]

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).