we are CADez 20 years reseller SketchUp in Netherlands
1 our client made a lot scrapbook files in 2024, she does garden designs and uses layout as a tool to put plants and symbols with scrapbooks. She loves that a lot !
2 we installed 2025 for next to 2024, not removals
3 copied all over from appdata folders to have templates, materials etc. Which is the expected way and we did that together.
4 then as all was looking fine we deinstalled 2024 using the program removal from windows as we see as a normal way to do that. We did NOT remove anything from the appdata\user folders, even 2021, 2023 from sketchup are still today on the disk. So by default normally adds things stay there even after deinstalling.
4 everything seemed OK until she missed all her scrapbooks in layout and asked us how to copy them from 2024. If there was some method for that.
5 we found that they scrapbooks have 2 options at saving in user\appdata\local(roaming)\sketchup OR c:\programdata\sketchup etc. folders Probably she used the second method, as it is the first one displayed I guess.
I made test after reinstalling 2024 and making a new scrapbook using the c:programdata\sketchup etc. structure
Then deinstalled 2024. It removes complete the 2024 folder so also the custom made scrapbooks! Wow!
That is a highly unwanted system that can cause, as it appears, a crying very unhappy client, you could see at a high cost as result of non-expected software behaviours or setup structures.
We would highly appreciated if the setup keeps custom mades things by customer. In general making the custom things more easy exchangable is a good idea like the Plugin transfer is very helpfull in 2025.
[C:\Users\[Username]\AppData\Roaming\SketchUp\SketchUp 202[n]\SketchUp] should be used to store your personal things - i.e. Classifications, Components, Environments, Gems64, Materials, Plugins, Styles and Templates.
The equivalent set up for your Layout folder should contain your folders for Scrapbooks and Templates, and maybe Images, plugins and Extensions etc…
Users can easily fall into this trap what happened.
So you could change my request.
Delete from SketchUp layout saveas scrapbook this default folder option to prevent users loosing scrapbooks at deinstalls.
The ProgramData path contains the ‘shipped’ folders for both SketchUp and Layout things. For Layout that’s predominantly Scrapbooks and Templates.
SketchUp’s Preferences lists the protected AppData paths to your own personal equivalents for you to save your own things, but Layout’s > … > Preferences > Folders offers the ProgramData paths as the default and not the protected AppData paths, and in some cases the alternative is not even shown unless you make it manually - e.g. PatternFills.
So this could be much better designed and programmed to protect your personalizations… @Colin
PS: The loss of the personalized Scrapbooks lost after an uninstall is very in convenient, but it should not be irreparable, provided that there’s a proper backup regime in place the previous version’s ProgramData folders should still be there allowing you to restore the ‘lost’ Scrapbooks - some work would be required, but it’d be fixable…
I agree that the ProgramData path should not be offered to users when saving scrapbooks. SketchUp doesn’t normally offer the ProgramData paths for saving materials, components, styles, etc.
Until such time as that option is removed, I think your best bet is to use this as a teaching moment. Teach your users where their custom made assets should be saved to avoid losing them in the event of an uninstall or a reinstall. Cover both LayOut and SketchUp.
It’s been indicated in the past that your custom templates are put into a user/appdata directory so it is safe from being deleted when uninstalling SketchUp. If I remember correctly, it’s a hard-coded location due to the timing in the loading process.
I haven’t ever lost my templates and figure as long as I’ve got at least two versions of SketchUP installed there’s automatically a backup for at least most of the templates. I guess you could copy them and save them into another folder if you wanted a backup. Or, since SketchUp templates are just .skp files, you could save them to a project folder on Trimble Connect.
