Files reading "View only"

Hi, I am having an issue when I go to open a SketchUp file many times I get a message “View Only” saying I can not edit and save. It also will always say when you open “do you want to open a newer saved version of file? Yes or No.” The new version (Yes) is not new. I always have to select No to get the current working file. It is also not updating Layout when I make changes to the SketchUp file. I have to close everything out and shut down to get Layout to update. I believe these issues are all connected. Somehow saving the file does not update through the system. Has anyone heard of the problem and or have a fix?

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How do you open the files? By double clicking in Finder?
How does it look (screenshot?) in Finder?

I open the SketchUp file directly from the finder.

You should only see (Read Only) in a model if that same model is open in another copy of SketchUp, most likely a different version.

The recovery file messages are slightly confusing, if you had a crash after the last time you had saved, the copy of the file with Recovered on top of the thumbnail is the latest changes you had made when the auto save happened. You can either open that one, and then save it on top of the original file, or, if you’re sure that the last changes in your most recent save are good enough, you would could that one instead. When you choose the last saved version instead of the recovery version, the recovery copy is deleted.

Are you opening the file from a regular folder or from a file sync one (dropbox, google drive, onedrive, etc)? If so, you may get a read only warning while it syncs to the cloud.

That might be the issue. I open the files from documents on my iCloud drive.

It hasn’t been an issue of the program crashing and reopening.

I’ve been running into the same issue, files opening as ‘Read Only’ when I have Sketchup open and try to open a .skp file through the program that is stored on Dropbox. Any ideas?

First thing: Download the .skp file to your local, internal drive before opening it. It’s risky to be working on files directly saved to the cloud.

That works just fine. But there are several of us accessing these files and downloading each one each time makes no sense for us. They are big files and the point of having them on the cloud is so that everyone can access the latest version and not have to store copies offline…

You run the risk of file corruption, losing your work.

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Does having to rebuild the model from the ground up because the file was corrupted during a save to the cloud make sense? Maybe it does for your group. It certainly wouldn’t for me.

You could use Trimble Connect for your cloud storage. When you check out the files to work on them, they’ll download to a local temporary folder. Saves and auto saves while you’re working will be local so you don’t risk cloud connection problems corrupting your files. When you’re finished working on the file publish it back to the Trimble Connect storage. This automatically creates a revision history, too.

I see the Locked File message sometimes after a crash - just saw it happen yesterday, in fact. I think it’s a sign the file wasn’t closed properly. The read only file can be “Saved As…” under a new name, which I sometimes do to leave “bread crumbs” of sorts in file versions in case something got messed up and I need to return to an older version.

I get this read only message occasionally.
Just do a quick ‘Save As’ with the same file name and it’s problem solved.

In terms of why, I’ll pay attention next time, but I back up to Dropbox so I can work between my computers in my garden office and the house. Files are saved locally and then uploaded automatically and synced.
From what people are saying it may be that I’m opening a file on one computer that I last worked on on the other and it hasn’t synced yet.

Many of us would recommend that anything Synced should be done manually. The risk is it will try to sync at the same time as an auto save and then all hell breaks loose.
Basically it’s ok to have them in the cloud, but have it set to a manual sync rather than an auto sync, and remember to sync when done.

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Next to the possibility to manually check out files in Trimble Connect there’s an option to checkout files that are being uploaded, so you can’t load it until your collegue has uploaded her/his last version.
Most internet connection have a less speedy upload compared to download.
It is designed to work with larger (bim) files in a Common Data Environment (CDE).