Hi all, new here and to SketchUp so apologies upfront for ignorance. I purchased a set of architectural templates from our local distributor in Australia and was given version 2020 layout files. After much googling and reading, i can’t seem to work out how to make them templates visible in the latest version of SketchUp 2023. I use a mac and need some help.
Thanks in advance.
You can open th files you received in LO 2023 and then use File>Save as Template and save them to your templates collection for later use.
You go to menu Edit > Preferences > Folder, at Templates session, add Folder path of your folder template. Then you can access them from “My templates” when open a new file.
This helps you save multi files as template once and not only you but also your co-worker can use the same template files if they are stored in a network or cloud. Someone may edit templates, then every one has the same file without copy or save as template per file again.
you cannot edit the template path in 2023… one more thing to fix 
You don’t need edit the template path, just delete the old path then add new one.
you’re suggesting that deleting the template path will cause the edit button to become active?
You’re looking at SketchUp’s Preferences. The discussion is about LayOut’s Templates folder.
“… i can’t seem to work out how to make them templates visible in the latest version of SketchUp 2023 …”
i thought i missed that.
I don’t know if this helps (I see I’m a year late to the convo; maybe this will help others), but I’ve just had to figure out a workaround to even be able to rename templates that I’ve already created. Honestly, we work with different CD set sizes, and not being able to group the formats (like the default templates are) is a PIA.
Anyway, I digress. The only way I could delete old/unused templates and/or rename templates for clarity was to open File Explorer, look at the top of the window for the button “View”: View > Show > Hidden Items
Doing this allows you to see a previously hidden, inaccessible/undiscoverable folder that is necessary in navigating to where the “My Templates” files are stored.
If your templates have been saving to the programs default location, then you’ll likely follow the folder path: of Users > {User/Name} > APPDATA > Roaming… The AppData folder is a HIDDEN file folder. Once you ‘unhide’ it, you can drill down to where the templates for LayOut are located and adjust accordingly.
I’m not tech illiterate… but I’m not a tech pro, either. I needed to finally bend and ask my IT husband to help me figure out how to access these files.
So, note to any SketchUp techies who may be trolling these discussions: it shouldn’t be that hard. AND, make it so we can organize/group our templates.
The default file locations for things like the templates, both for LayOut and for SketchUp are intentionally placed in a hidden folder so they can’t easily be accessed by those who aren’t computer literate and possibly accidentally deleted.
The information for their location is shown in Preferences.
You could add an additional folder somewhere else for LayOut templates if you want.
So, since I see you’re a Sage when it comes to SketchUp… let me ask you this: now that I’ve managed to identify a folder where my templates are, and have LayOut include that folder in where it pulls from for templates, why won’t it populate all of the files in that folder? I can only get it to give me the first 5 files of the folder as an option…
Where are you seeing those first 5 files?
As a test I created a new template folder on my desktop which I called LO Templates 2 and added it to the templates in Preferences. I copied all of my custom templates and pasted them into that folder. They all show up for me. At the very bottom of the screenshot it says Templates which is the default template folder.
From the LayOut Menu Bar: New > My Templates (in the Choose Tempate dialogue box)
Now that I’ve organized my custom templates into folders for ARCH A, B and D, they show up as separate sections. But only the first 5 thumbnail representations of each new template are shown.
Will I just need to modify my new doc creation process by just going to the menu bar and selecting “Open”? (This concerns me because I’m not the only one who will be using these files, and I feel that puts overwrites of the templates at risk).
That’s CRAZY. Mine isn’t doing that…
What is the folder location for your templates? I didn’t do anything special to make this work. It should work for you, too.
GAH! I figured it out. For some reason, some of the files I saved as templates are only showing as “File” in File Explorer not as “LayOut 2023” files. I’ll go back through and attempt to figure out why this happened and/or process the template files again so they’re the right format. Thanks for bearing with me. I’ve been at this all day and about to scream. I appreciate your guidance and help.
Show the file extensions. They should all be .layout.
Also keep in mind that any that show as “Backup of …” won’t show.
I wonder how you got some copied without the correct extension.
I am absolutely befuddled. I am going to step away from this and revisit with a fresh brain tomorrow. When/If I figure out what happened, I’ll update you. Again, thank you for stepping in with a willingness to help. I really appreciate it.
Happy to help. I wish I could have guessed at what the issue was but to be honest, it didn’t occur to me that the problem was file extension related.
Maybe its wine or beer o’clock. 
LOL, yeah… I’m looking at the original location where the files were saved, and even though I specifically selected the option to Save As Template, selected the My Templates folder and hit the Save button, the program/my computer just simply didn’t save the data correctly in the first place… I guess? This is well beyond my knowledge base. I have no idea why it did this. Here’s what my File Explorer folder looks like (the ones that have the LayOut logo are the ones that DO populate in the My Templates dialogue box. The ones that are ‘blank’ are the ones that are only identified as “File”. NO IDEA how that happened.)
