Duplicate and Copy to Mine are the only two ways to make a copy in Fincanva. Duplicate copies an item you already own; Copy to Mine copies a Public item into your library so you can edit it. Both produce an independent new item that keeps the original's settings and none of its results, and neither ever changes the original.
Also seen as: clone
Earlier releases labelled Duplicate Create a copy or Save as copy. Both labels are retired; the app says Duplicate everywhere.
What does Duplicate do?
Duplicate makes an independent copy of an item you already own — a variant of your own strategy, a second screener that starts from the first. It appears as Duplicate in the item's title menu, its row menu, and its page header, and it is the only copy action offered on something in your own library.
Duplicate is not the same as Save as new screener, the button in a Fin suggestion review — that saves a suggested set of filters as a separate screener instead of overwriting yours.
How does Fincanva handle it?
- The suggested name is the original's name with
(copy)appended, and you can replace it before committing. - A copy uses the last saved version of the source, so unsaved edits are excluded — save before copying if you want them in.
- On success the app confirms with
Copy created. - A copy always starts with Live off, whichever way you made it, so it never joins your live book by accident (see Mark Live).
- Any copy's name is auto-adjusted if it would collide with a strategy already in the folder it lands in: Fincanva appends
(1),(2)and so on. This applies to Duplicate as well as Copy to Mine, and to the name you type yourself in the prompt — two strategies in one folder can never share a name.
What does a copy keep, and what does it drop?
A copy keeps the configuration and drops the history — so it is the same idea with a clean slate:
| Kept | Dropped |
|---|---|
| Every setting (allocation, risk, exits, rebalance cadence) | The run history and all backtest results |
| The strategy type | The Live state — a copy is never followed |
| The benchmark and the simulation start year | Its folder placement — the copy lands at the top level of Mine |
| The description | — |
| For a screener: its filter rows and its universe | — |
Because the results are dropped, a fresh copy has never been run: its run status reads To run until you back-test it. Nothing you then do to the copy — editing, running, deleting — reaches the original.
Which of the two you get depends on who owns the item, not on what you want to do with it.
What does Copy to Mine do?
Copy to Mine copies an item from the Public tab into your own library, and it is the only way to get an editable version of a Public item. The Public original is never touched — you are working on your own copy from the moment it lands.
It refuses to run on anything else: use it on an item you already own and the app answers Copy to Mine is only available for Public items. That refusal is the clean statement of the split — Public items get Copy to Mine, your own items get Duplicate.
Why does Fincanva sometimes refuse to copy a strategy?
The source holds zero components. Fincanva never lets you build or save one — you cannot create a zero-component strategy yourself — so only a few older documents that predate that guarantee are in this state. A copy carries the source's components over unchanged, so copying one would produce a strategy that renders but can never be saved or run, with no way to fix it afterwards. Duplicate or Copy to Mine answers: Nothing to copy: this strategy does not hold the minimum of 1 strategy, so the copy could not be saved or run. A source with one component is not affected — an Incomplete Combined copies exactly like any other strategy.
Duplicate meets a benchmark your plan does not include. A copy is a new strategy and is checked like one, so Duplicate refuses a source benchmarked against one of your own portfolios when your plan does not include that; detaching a component from a Combined is checked the same way. A public item normally uses a market benchmark, which every plan includes. What a copy keeps and what you may re-point is on benchmark.
You are at your plan's strategy limit. Each copy, by Duplicate or Copy to Mine, adds one to the strategies you hold, so a copy that would take you past what your plan allows is refused: nothing is created and the original is untouched. Deleting a strategy you no longer need, or moving to a plan that allows more, makes room — see plan limits.
Why is a screener copy refused when it holds too many filters?
A screener copy is refused when the source holds more filter rows than the limit allows. Duplicate and Copy to Mine are both checked this way, and the app answers One of the screeners you're copying holds more filters than your Free plan allows, so it can't be copied — nothing was created., naming the plan you are on. Nothing is created.
The limit is the same on every plan, and no upgrade raises it. The sentence names the plan you are on, but changing plan will not let the copy through — there is no higher figure to buy. See Screener for the figure itself and for what happens to a screener you already hold that is over it.
Nothing is trimmed to make it fit, and that is deliberate. A copy that quietly dropped the filters over the limit would screen a different set of instruments from the one you asked to copy, under the same name, with nothing telling you so.
The source is never changed by the refusal. A screener you already hold that is over the limit keeps working and keeps its rows — see plan limits for what your plan allows and what happens to items you already hold.
What does it look like in practice?
You own a strategy called "Momentum EU" and want to try a monthly rebalance without losing the quarterly version. You choose Duplicate; the prompt offers "Momentum EU (copy)" and you rename it to "Momentum EU monthly". The copy appears at the top level of Mine with every setting from the last saved "Momentum EU" — same instruments, same allocation, same benchmark — but with no results at all, so its status reads To run.
You change the cadence to monthly, save, and back-test. You now have two independent strategies with comparable settings and separate result histories. "Momentum EU" never moved, was never re-run, and if it happened to be followed Live, the copy did not inherit that.
Where does the "Created from" line come from?
The muted Created from {sources} — {date} line is provenance for a Combined: it appears when a Combined strategy was built out of existing strategies, and it names them and the date. A plain Duplicate or Copy to Mine does not stamp it — a copy carries no recorded link back to what it was copied from, and the only trace is the name the app suggests.