Partials work this way; If all instances of a partial are unpacked, then the partial will disappear after you quit and reboot RW. This is/was confusing to me and I had to lose a lot of partials before I understood what was happening.
The only reason to unpack a partial would be to change that instance of it, and not any other instance anywhere else on your page or in your project. Here’s a good example of a partial use: Create a text stack that says Copyright 2015. Create a partial of that stack. Place the partial in a whole mess of pages in your project, but do not unpack them. When 2016 arrives (very soon!), open the partial and change 2015 to 2016. That will change all placed instances of the partial in your project. Here’s another thread that discusses creating a library or stylesheet of partials in your project as a way to manage them.
One thing I stumbled on the other day was finding that you can modify an individual text stack partial to allow the text of that instance to be edited without affecting the other instances of that partial site-wide. Click the tiny pin (looks like a pin to me) icon at the upper right of the partial window to toggle the edit feature on and off. I’m not completely sure how this feature works, and I need to investigate it more. I still have much more to learn about partials.
