Hi Colin,
I am unable to believe this as yet. Am now downloading the file on my laptop. Will soon let you know when it does open here. Thanks a ton :)))
You should take note of the file size difference Colin reports after purging. That’s more than a 75% reduction. It sounds like your model is seriously bloated with unneeded stuff. You should be purging your files often.
PLEASE make a copy before you do anything else, then Purge and make another!
Sure! Will do so
Thanks a alot for all your advice.
Hi Colin,
I can’t thank you enough for sending me the corrected file.
Yes, it opened up on my laptop and now I don’t need to redo it. wohoooo!!
Have a great day ahead!!
Thanks a lot again!
I’ve now purged the file and the file size has reduced from 1.8 GB to 4.5 MB.
Would always keep this in mind.
Thanks everyone for helping me out.
More than 99% reduction. 
The file is 189MB in size and i am using sketchup pro 2020. Please somebody help the file is important and i dont know how to fix it.
Please don’t double post. That just creates confusion. Colin will see your other post and try to recover your file as soon as he can.
Can you help me recover my file? I worked on the file last night and now it’s saying “unexpected error occurred.” I am using this forum for the first time. My submission is due tomorrow. sketchup thumnail shows my model but there is no file
He can help only if you share your demaged file:
-upload it to your forum post.:.
(or drag and drop )
or - if it is too big - share a link to your file stored on a cloud storage (Dropbox, Google Drive, Onedrive, We transfer etc…)
I will take a look when you have uploaded a file somewhere, as dezmo suggested.
Never mind, I found your other post, and will reply there.
Hi,
I’m having a big issue with my SketchUp 2024 file.
My .skp (about 700 MB) suddenly won’t open. SketchUp first says the file is locked by another user, then gives Unexpected file format.
I also tried the .skb backup (about 500 MB) by renaming it to .skp, but I get the same error.
The project crashed a few times while I was working on it, but I always waited for it to finish saving before closing my PC.
Has anyone had this happen before? Is there any way to recover the file or repair it? It’s a very important project.
Lots of users have had this issue. Typically it happens when the file is saved directly to the cloud or other external storage. Where were you saving the file while working on it?
The .skb file is considerably smaller than the .skp. The .skp file opens in SketchUp 2026 after fixing a bunch of bad materials. The model is more than half a kilometer from the origin which doesn’t make sense.
I did my usual cleanup. Fixed incorrect tag usage …
… purged unused content …
… and reduced the ridiculously obese materials to a reasonable size.
This improved performance and reduce the file size by 60%.
Update to the current version of SketchUp and you should be able to open the file yourself.
Your profile says you have a Classic license for SketchUp 2024. Does that mean you are using a cr acked version since there is no legitimate Classic license?
Thank you so much for taking the time to look at my file!
Now that you mention it, I was actually saving the project directly to an external drive while I was working on it. I didn’t realize that could cause this issue so that may have been the problem
I also created my profile account today just because I was trying to solve this problem, so I’m not sure what I put in my profile regarding the license. I’ll check and update it.