I am working in a research lab at a university and we have been using SketchUp programs for our research for years (files go back to the year 2013). All of these previous SketchUp programs were being ran on a PC with Windows 7. We needed to upgrade to the SketchUp 2022 version, so we downloaded it but it would not run on the old computer. We discovered it was because the Windows 7 software was too outdated. We then got a new PC with the current version of Windows 10 and have SketchUp 2022 downloaded, but there are no files. I am unable to view the files on the old computer to transfer them over for two reasons 1) It is no longer connected to internet and 2) Even when it was connected to internet it was not able to open up any of the older version of SketchUp (2019 being the most recent) because it said our license expired and we needed to buy a new one (therefore we bought the 2022 version).
How are we able to access our old files from the old computer and transfer them to the new version of SketchUp if we are unable to access the files with/without internet on the Windows 7 computer. We have been trying everything to complete this task the last few weeks with no luck.
There should be no reason to expect that the files stored on the old computer would be accessible on the new one unless you have some connection between the two.
You could copy the files to a USB memory stick and copy them to the new computer or you might be able to move the hard drive from the old computer and put it in the new one or get an external hard drive enclosure to put it in and connect that to the new computer.
I tried to put the old versions on a USB and transfer them over, but the new computer requires that those programs be downloaded and as far as my research on the issue goes, I didn’t think any version before 2020 could be downloaded.
If you are transferring .skp files there’s no need to install an older version of SketchUp. Simply copy the .skp files from your memory stick into a folder on your new computer.
I also tried to open Sketchup 2019 version on the old computer and I can’t even access files to copy or move anything over because it wouldn’t load a sign in screen on the Windows 7 computer when it had internet. That is why we figured the Windows 7 didn’t have the capability to even start the program anymore.
You also don’t need to open SketchUp on the older computer to copy your model files. Just open the folder location in Windows Explorer and copy the .skp files.
As Dave says, once you copy those files via an external drive, to the new computer, they should open with a later version of SketchUp.
I can’t find any licenses for you, but if you had the old Education Classic licenses, those did expire after a year. They were $50, and only included the SketchUp desktop applications. What you have now is the Studio subscription for $55, which includes other applications. It too will stop working for you if you don’t renew your subscription when it runs out.
i use onedrive and google drive as backups and a tool called “freefilesync” (by a developer to whom i contribute via paypal) which have “profiles” to copy over the components, materials etc as redundant storage. then i have other profiles to copy back - so my laptop and desktop are kept in sync without requiring the actual cloud drives to be directly involved (and avoiding weird file lock issues they both have at inopportune times).