# LibGDX changing actors parents is resulting in unwanted (x,y) translation

I have a Rolodex of task item actors I want to drag to an agenda tablet. My drag and drop functionality is non-native, but came from modifying a book's implementation. The problem seems to be when I change the parent of a task item, 'a', to the agenda's parent, 'other':

other.getParent().addActor(a);


When I do so the actor's coordinates shift. I want the actor to remain in the same spot I dropped it down. It worked as desired previously, possibly because the Rolodex's parent and the agenda's parent shared the same, whole-screen dimensions. I've since moved away from layout to positioning actors and their groups on the screen with setBounds(). Tracking the (x,y) coordinates of my dragged item I'm getting negative values for x while it remains visible on screen, making me think actor.getX() and actor.getY() return values relative to the parent carousel container class I made, and not the screen/stage nor the agenda's container.

I found a set of methods off of Actor that looked promising, localToXXXX(Vector2), and experimented with a variety of them before settling on the following I think should work:

            Vector2 snapShot = a.localToActorCoordinates(other.getParent(), new Vector2( a.getX(), a.getY()) );
a.setBounds(snapShot.x, snapShot.y, a.getWidth(), a.getHeight());


...but it doesn't. Converting it to stage or screen coordinates with the other method options shifts it even farther away from desired. What am I misunderstanding? How can I change an actor's parent without the x,y shifting?

Vector2 snapShot = new Vector2(a.getParent().getX() + a.getX(), a.getParent().getY() + a.getY()) ;