Magento 2 : New Configurable product - selecting existing simple products manually?

Question

I am creating a new Configurable product via the Admin Panel (based on color). My simple products (children) already exist via a product import. When I click on "Edit Configurations" it takes me down the path of creating new simple variations. I don't want to do this. I simply want to select the existing products.

Interestingly if I go ahead and generate some simple variations via the "Edit Configurations" after the save I can see a new link "Add Products Manually" beside "Edit Configurations". That's what I want to see the first time around after I tell it that the new configurable product is based on color.

How can I solve this?

Answer 1

There is currently an open issue on github.

Interestingly there seems to be other closed issues around this. At the moment i am not sure it is getting elevated to any degree. Maybe because people are not talking about it too much but it seems quite a fundamental problem when creating a configurable. Generating a product first before you get the option of manually adding other products is not a sensible work around.