Greetings. I have purchased several plugins. I have to change the computer and deactivated them and then reactivated on the other one.
They have been purchased on Extension Warehouse (I do not think I have done it on Sketchucation Plugin Store).
I CANNOT find the way to deactivated them. Should uninstalling them from Extension Manager deactivated them on the old computer and make possible to activate them on the new one?
Thank you in advance for prompt response.
Yes, uninstalling them in Extension Manager should free up that activation. You would want to make sure to be signed in with your usual Extension Warehouse email address, though I imagine it would still work if you were on a different email address.
Didn’t realize this when I upgraded from 2018 to 2019 so it became real fun when I upgraded from 2019 to 2020. The support Peeps have been greatly helpful in getting this straitened out.
But, I have learned my lesson - Deactivate, uninstall, then upgrade to new version!
Zarloff, you shouldn’t have to “learn a lesson.” Whoever is responsible for implementing the licensing mechanism for the warehouse should be handed a mop and told that they have a new career. This wreaks of an unexperienced intern writing critical code, or simply a feature that was implemented temporarily that has never been revisited and properly patched or implemented.
I’m not starting a new thread because this is my exact same topic, so I’m adding to it.
There are several user scenarios that have simply not been thought through, or that have been ignored. The lack of handling of these scenarios has prevented me from activating some plugins when needed, at odd hours when your tech support isn’t available, and it has even prevented me from repurchasing plugins to work around the issue. I know many people gripe about spending $1 on something, but some of us buy tools that we need and the plugins at even $100-a-pop are insignificant to the productivity that we get from them. So in my case, sadly, I can’t even support the developers by purchasing additional licenses to get me going in a pinch. If I registered as a developer and put my own custom code in the Extension Warehouse for a price and my users ran into these issues, I’d be seriously pissed off.
On the Mac version, I have several extensions for which the number of activations cannot be decremented. A typical app install on the Mac is to throw the outdated app or its enclosing folder in the trash and drag the new one to the Applications folder. It’s been this way for years and will continue to be this way for many many apps for years to come, so the developers should be aware of this and handle this scenario in their warehouse implementation. However, I’ll acknowledge that SketchUp is doing it their new way, I didn’t read all the docs, and I need to deal with the new way of life. The problem is, I have no accessible mechanism to deactivate all my previous activations and start fresh. I also have no reliable way to deactivate old plugins one-by-one to at least free-up an activation for reuse. I emailed support a few days ago, I got a response that someone had to add activations because they couldn’t deactivate any, they added a few activations to some of my purchases, and this got me going again with one of my most used plugins. I thank them for that help, but oddly, they suggested that I post in the forum about this issue. Isn’t that tech support’s job to convey this info up the chain?
Back to the issue… I have reinstalled 2019 and 2020, dragged copies of the extensions from the old plugins folder to the new plugins folder, made sure I’m signed into the warehouse, checked “My Downloads” in the warehouse to observe my activations, and tried to uninstall the appropriate extensions, but it doesn’t reliably work. I have managed to decrement the activation count of one plugin, but I usually get a silent uninstall with an occasional Ruby console error of “Extension returned wrong type for method mark_as_uninstalled” that points to at least one underlying issue. So, my only choice is to email support, wait for them to work-around the underlying issue if they’re able and willing, and prepare to deal with the issue again in the next SketchUp update. Wonderful 
I was willing to repurchase the immediately needed plug-in, but I wasn’t able to. The warehouse button would let me “Install”, but all it did was to install a fresh copy, complain that I wasn’t licensed, take me back to the warehouse to buy a copy, which of course only offered to let me install it again. I mean, WTF? Again, as a developer, I’d be pissed. As a user willing to spend $, I’m pissed.
So I’ve wasted way more time that I should have to because relevant developers didn’t actually think through all the user scenarios, and this has left me incredibly frustrated during times that I could not get immediate help. I’m not saying I’m jumping ship or any of that cr_p because SketchUp is awesome and I rely on it daily. I love it. I’ve been a user since it started life as AtLast in Colorado, and will be until yet another company buys it, runs it into the ground, and the core developers leave and start yet a new company with something better 
but for the love of god, listen to the users who have issues and re-think how you’re implementing the extension licensing.
A much shorter addition…
One of my plugins has a 1/3 activation count, but I can’t re-install it from the warehouse. I get a “Purchase $7” button with grayed out text that does actually take me to a purchase page, but if I have an activation count of 1/3, why is it taking me to a purchase page?
I hope you, the SketchUp team, sees how user confidence is seriously eroded by the way this whole licensing mechanism behaves from the user-side.
I had the same problem when I was willing to purchase a second copy of the plugin and it wouldn’t allow me to do it either.
For this part of the problem, whether you see Install or Purchase depends on how you are signed in. If you are signed in with your brock@ email, and are looking at an extension you previously paid for, it should not try to charge you again.
For the bigger issue, I have an idea about that, and will send you a direct message.
Thanks Colin. I have only ever used a single email for SketchUp, so to my knowledge, it’s always been the brock@ address. And not yet being registered as a dev myself, I don’t know if a dev can “screw up” anything within a portal that would potentially expire a valid license too early, such as mis-configuring a plugin as a subscription model or as a trial when it should be a non-expiring license restricted to three activations. Either way, I see extensions listed under “My Downloads” with available activations, and I’m having issues with re-installations and activations that as you suggest, should not happen.
And I’ve responded to your dm.
My gut feeling is that side-loading of extensions from the past, be it drag-and-drop of .rb files or the use of the Extension Manager’s “Install Extension” button with .rbz files, is a potential source of problems. I see this with Mac App Store apps sharing id’s with non-App Store versions, and I can only assume some Ruby devs have maintained naming and/or identifiers from previous versions that did not come from the Extension Warehouse. I could be completely off-base here, but I certainly have a plethora of things that have been migrated forward that were added via drag-n-drop, added from .rbz files or downloaded from the warehouse. As a result, I do not have an ideal pure Extension Warehouse install.