Sketchup 2020 Unresponsive When Opening Older Files

[Gubermensch]

See attached video. Sketchup operates perfectly when launching from 2020, or opening files generated via 2020. When opening archived SKPs (mostly 2018) Sketchup becomes unresponsive. Task manager shows sketchup_webhelper.exe activated and associated with the troublesome files on most occasions when this errors occurs. Tried many archive files, small and large, it’s not any specific corrupted file. I can import these older SKPs as a workaround and everything works fine, but isn’t ideal for obvious reasons.

I uninstalled Sketchup 2020 (no other versions installed), ran a fresh downloaded installer as admin, and still have the error occuring.

What am I missing? Thanks for the help.

Edit: the typical “this is an older version of Sketchup…” message pops up briefly and disappears. Assuming it’s still active, but for some reason inaccessible. Any ideas?

[Box]

Sounds like it is the warning popup, it may be hiding off screen for some reason.
Hit alt and space, then m, then tap any arrow key and move the mouse around without clicking and the error may come into view.

[Gubermensch]

Thanks for the recommendation. Gave it a shot. No go. It’s also not visible in task view.

Yea, pretty sure it’s the “Older version” popup. Strange… never experienced this before with Sketchup.

Just reformatted my PC. Everything is fresh, so I haven’t had a chance to dismiss the prompt yet.

[Gubermensch]

Any way to manually modify a text file or something in program files to prevent the “older version” popup?

[MikeWayzovski]

If it exists, it should be somewhere in the user AppData, PrivatePreferences.json (Roaming) or SharedPreferences.json (Local)

[Gubermensch]

Much appreciated. I’ll give it a shot.

[dezmo]

I have checked
In your Roaming folder
( c:\Users\your_user_name\AppData\Roaming\SketchUp\SketchUp 2020\SketchUp\ )

You have to put this to file SharedPreferences.json: I used windows Notepad to edit

},
"VersionDlg": {
    "Suppress": 20
}

Hint: make a backup of your original SharedPreferences.json… just in case

[Gubermensch]

That did the trick! Thanks dezmo.