Recovering a Corrupt Sketchup File?

I have a file that appears to be corrupted, I operate out of SketchUp Pro 2024. When I try to open it I get a message saying “Failed to open document” or “This does not appear to be a SketchUp Model”. This happens on both the .skp and .skb.

I tried renaming the files to no avail. I’ve also been looking for a potential autosave as I always have that option checked but there doesn’t seem to be one that I can find. Maybe because the file was manually saved days before I noticed it was corrupted or because I save to the local google drive on our computer.

Any help would be appreciated!

Here is the dropbox link with the primary and backup file:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/t6q7n9imzioh9wr3l6mhj/ACO9yqVhAFH_YOBithxwQAo?rlkey=ffryf0ak0imqdhjtn7lg86k27&st=8gkd9mxp&dl=0

The .skp file contains nothing but zeroes. The .skb file is about 25% zeroes. Absolutely nothing to recover from the .skp. Maybe @colin can recover something from the .skb file.

If you saved it to your Google Drive folder you were saving it to the cloud. This seems to be a common cause of these corrupted files. You should be saving to a folder on the internal drive. Not a Google Drive location.

The .skb file is the autosave file. There may be another backup in User/App Data/Local/SketchUp/SketchUp 2024/SketchUp/working AppData is normally a hidden folder but you can expose it in File Explorer.

Thank you for trying, I figured it might be beyond help. I will probably start saving things in Trimble Connect too just in case this happens again.

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I am repeatedly having this issue too. At first I was saving to the cloud and I thought that was the problem, but I am getting the same issues when saving it locally on my pc. It’s incredibly frustrating as I am working on a large assignment for my study and I am afraid that I am going to lose it all and have to start all over again. I keep saving regular backups to try to avoid this happening. Sometimes even the .skb file is corrupted.

I suggest breaking your project up into smaller pieces as component files. This way you won’t lose it all if one of the “piece” files gets corrupted.

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hello DaveR

I look at many forum here that you can help help people to restore they .skp/.skb file. may you help me recover mine?

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1jgyzp-QiuSLRAMYY_tuF5SmWGJOI5CQ5?usp=sharing

I couldn’t open your model or backup file. They seem to have some corruption (empty space inside) but @colin might have better tools to recover at least something…

The usual tricks to try and recover the file aren’t working. I will ask a developer to take a look.

Looking forward for it, sir

Unfortunately the developers couldn’t recover the file.

So this is dead end. Ok. Thanks for the help

I didn’t see this post until just now. Next time you want to ping me put @ in front of my name.

Going forward make sure you are saving your files into a folder on your internal drive. Your forum profile indicates you are using SketchUp 2023 so that implies you have an active subscription. With that subscription comes unlimited storage on Trimble Connect. Utilize that to save a backup copy of the model periodically. Each time you save the file to your Trimble Connect storage an incremental version is saved. This makes it possible to go back to an earlier version if you need that.

Hi, today the same problem happened to me. After some computer error (I don’t know what was the cause), I can’t open the file I was working on during the error, neither .skp nor .skb. Could anyone (maybe @colin :)) check the file, please?

You’ll need to share it before any of us can try!

Here you go :slight_smile:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/fvw93yv4lcqs59592l7ze/krzysiek.skp?rlkey=omqla2wx7k1vxrvqg3l7sbfuo&st=mprhzfr4&dl=0

I couldn’t open your file. Maybe @colin can, he has some more sophisticated tools. It might have about 10% corruption.

Ok, thanks for trying.

Unfortunately, the file ends with the last part all filled with zeros. It may be that @colin or a developer can recover some part of it, but the zero-filled part is lost.

Bad news. Thanks for trying anyway.