Hello SketchUp community,
I saved a folder with many SketchUp files on an external hard drive without backing them up. When I later wanted to use the files from the external drive (after copying them over first), I received this message: “This does not appear to be a SketchUp model.”
I’ve tried changing the file extensions to .SKP, .SKB, and others. The files still show their original size in the operating system (about 17 MB), so they don’t appear to be empty.
Has anyone had this problem, or does anyone know a possible solution?
For some users all or part of the file is nothing but zeroes. Looking at the file size alone doesn’t give a good indication of what the file contains.
You indicate you are using Pro SketchUp 2024 so presumably you have an active subscription. You should be saving your files to the local internal drive on your computer and to your Trimble Connect storage so you have backups saved there. If you must put the files onto an external drive, copy them to that drive and leave the originals on the internal drive at least until you’ve confirmed the files copied successfully. If you are only putting them on the external drive so you can access them from a different computer, you could instead access them from your Trimble Connect storage and leave the external USB drive out of the equation entirely.
As @dezmo directed, share the .skp file so we can try to help you out.
This just happened to me this week. I have “lost” a couple of files that now appear empty. I am trying to upload the file for you, but it says its too large. Sadly, I had read about this happening, but then it was working so well for me, I forgot to backup! Let me know if you can help. Using Sketchup 26’
Unfortunately it isn’t a SketchUp file. It’s missing the header information among other problems. Compare the taxt on the right with that of a viable SketchUp file.
Did you use some sort of file recovery application on this file? Where were you saving it while working on it? Have you tried renaming the .skb file to .skp and opening that?
You should be saving backups of your files to Trimble Connect. It’s included in your subscription so no reason not to use it.
I didn’t use any recovery file (that I know of)…that’s way above my head! LOL I save my files often and usually try to save them on both my SSD and my desktop. But lately I have been moving between computers daily and have been relying on my SSD. Lesson learned! I will save to Trimble Connect. I do that often as well. A question….does Trimble Auto save? Or do I have to save as needed? Is there a storage limit? I will try renaming my backup. Fortunately, I am sure my desk top version is not too far behind my latest.
If you have to have the files on an external drive, save them locally first and then copy them to the external drive.
You need to intentionally save to Trimble Connect. After you’ve done that, though you need to also do periodic Save as… saves and save to the internal drive.
No. There’s no limit for you since you have a Pro subscription. Each time you save the file to Trimble Connect it’s essentially an incremental save meaning that you will have older copies of the file to fall back on if things go pear-shaped with the current version.
That’s good. Hopefully you can make up what was lost without too much trouble.
Me again! I have been successfully saving to Trimble Connect, until today. When I try to Open in Trimble connect or Save to Trimble Connect, I see a weird screen. (Attached) It has no choices to select.
So the question is, what changed recently? There isn’t an outage on the Trimble Connect side. I just saved a file to Trimble Connect from SketchUp 2026 so at least my computer has no difficulty contacting Trimble Connect. Granted that’s a non-statistically significant sample size but between the two of us I guess it’s 50%.
LOL! I have reached out to my IT. I can’t think what may have changed…other than I have not used my lap top for a few days. When I get back to work tomorrow, I will see if my desk top still connects. I suppose I could always try to reinstall Sketchup.
