Keep old reference designators when copying a schematic sheet into Altium

Question

We have a pair of designs with Altium that are very similar; one board is a cut down version of the other essentially. We want to import schematic sheets into the new, cut down version from the old version and keep the reference designators exactly as they were.

So, we go to the original schematic, CTL-A, CTL-C and then in the new schematic sheet in the new project and do CTL-C. This copies the existing sheet into the the new project and you can see the old reference designators greyed out. I want to keep these greyed out ref designators in the new project as they official designators.

There surely must be a way to do this? I've tried standard annotating but it just won't keep the designators as they are. I'm importing sheet one into sheet one etc, I'm not in any instance changing the sheet number from one project to the other.

Anyone know how to do this please? Altium don't half know how to overcomplicate simple operations!

Many thanks.

Answer 1

In Altium Schematic: Edit -> Smart Paste with settings: "Paste as" set to "Themselves"

However, if you want to copy a whole sheet, then consider copying the file outside of Altium (File browser/explorer), placing it in the current location of your new project, and then in Altium, adding the new file to your new project.