Help recovering a corrupted SketchUp 2025 file

Technical Problems
1

Hello everyone,

I’m looking for help recovering an important architectural project created in SketchUp 2025.

The file was saved directly to a FAT32 USB drive and is approximately 18 MB. It suddenly stopped opening, showing a “File not found or invalid” error.

I’ve tried opening it in both SketchUp 2025 and 2026, without success.

I had the “Create Backup” option enabled, but I couldn’t find a corresponding .skb file.

I also created a full image of the USB drive and scanned it with DMDE, but unfortunately couldn’t find a working backup.

I’m using Windows 11, with 16 GB RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU.

Would someone be willing to examine the corrupted .skp file and see whether any geometry can be recovered?

I’ve uploaded the original corrupted SKP file here in case anyone would like to examine it

I would really appreciate any help. Thank you!

2

That’s generally been shown to be problematic. You should be saving to an internal drive. If you need a cop of it on a USB drive, copy it over from the internal drive.

That seems to be fairly common when saving to an external drive.

It looks like the file is missing a significant amount of data. It might be that @colin can get something out of it but I wouldn’t sit around holding my breath. I’d get started remaking the model.

Is there a reason you are still using SketchUp 2025?

3

Thank you so much for taking the time to look at my file and for your advice. I honestly didn’t know that saving directly to a USB drive could cause these kinds of problems. I’ll definitely save my projects to my computer from now on. I originally created this project in SketchUp 2025, but I’ve also tried opening it in 2026 without success. I downloaded it yesterday actually

I’m really hoping Colin might be able to recover at least part of the model, as I’ve put a lot of work into it.

Thank you again for your help. I really appreciate it!

4

The SketchUp version won’t change your corrupted file.

Downloaded what yesterday? SketchUp 2026? Presumably you have a current subscription for SketchUp right? Or is it a cr acked version you are using? You should go ahead and install SketchUp 2027.

Don’t waste time hoping. Get to work rebuilding it if you need the model.

You’re welcome.

5

Good news. This was one of the times when the file had too much data. Here is a fixed version:

sketchup alvear_fixed.skp (15.4 MB)

When you open it you may see that something gets fixed. That’s a material layer that has a problem. Hopefully it won’t be a noticeable change.

6

OH MY GOD, IT WORKED!!! :sob: Everything is there! I genuinely thought I’d lost all my work, and you managed to recover the entire project.

Thank you SO, SO much for taking the time to help me. You have no idea how much this means to me! can´t thank you enough