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Convert old Sketch files to Sketch 3.1 file format?

over 8 years ago from , Cofounder @ Mediately

Today my Dropbox decided it should go haywire and rendered obsolete the Sketch file I was working on. After wrangling with Dropbox restore and Backblaze, I succeeded in getting my file back with minimal loss of work.

Then, I noticed that the file was marked as "Sketch Drawing (Old)." Is there a way to convert these to the new file format introduced in Sketch 3.1?

Having the design as a single file instead of a folder should make it more resilient to similar problems. Googling and going through the menus didn't help.

16 comments

  • Ian Soper, over 8 years ago (edited over 8 years ago )

    If you control-click or right-click on the icon you'll notice that on old sketch files, not updated to the new 3.1 format, will show "Show Package Contents"

    Old Sketch Format

    Files in the new format will NOT show "show package contents" in the menu. The fact that they are shown as the file type of "Sketch Drawing (Old)" seems erroneous.

    1 point
    • Robert van KlinkenRobert van Klinken, over 8 years ago (edited over 8 years ago )

      Image alt

      Saving it in 3.1 doesn't change anything.

      0 points
    • Marko NikolovskiMarko Nikolovski, over 8 years ago (edited over 8 years ago )

      Very good point. In fact, on looking at some files I haven't opened since the update I got this: Old file.

      And for the file in question, I got this: New file.

      I'm calling this a bug in Sketch — they mixed up the new/old file descriptions.

      0 points
    • Marko NikolovskiMarko Nikolovski, over 8 years ago (edited over 8 years ago )

      I can also confirm Dropbox sees the "Sketch Drawing (Old)" as a file, while the "Sketch Drawing" file is seen as a folder.

      0 points
  • Daan van KlinkenDaan van Klinken, over 8 years ago

    Have you tried opening it with Sketch 3.1 and then saving it?

    1 point
  • Sacha S, over 6 years ago

    I found a way! It's still a manual process but better than nothing:

    • Copy your Sketch designs as SVG code from Sketch V
    • Paste it in a text editor and save a .svg
    • Open the .svg file in Sketch V-1

    Tried this from Sketch V41.2 to V38.2

    0 points
  • Tropical HoochTropical Hooch, over 7 years ago

    Just had this problem. The file I was trying to open was in my icloud drive. Wouldn't open. After I moved it out of icould and into a different folder on my local computer it opened up just fine...

    0 points
  • Jess LamJess Lam, over 8 years ago

    I ran into a related issue in which I could not open Sketch files that were saved in Google Drive locally. I had to uninstall 3.1 and other old versions of Sketch that I hadn't realized were still on my machine. Then I reinstalled 3.1. After that they seem to working properly.

    0 points
  • Thibaut NinoveThibaut Ninove, over 8 years ago (edited over 8 years ago )

    Any old Sketch file saved in Sketch 3.1 should be converted to the new format. That's what they told me yesterday: https://twitter.com/tbnv/status/516587908023984128

    If it doesn't work, I guess you should send a bug report.

    0 points
    • Marko NikolovskiMarko Nikolovski, over 8 years ago

      Yes, it seems it does, but the "Kind" column in Finder says "Sketch Drawing (Old)" for the new files, and "Sketch Drawing" for the old files. There's the bug, saving to the new file format should work fine.

      0 points
  • Sam SunSam Sun, over 8 years ago

    I noticed today that my 3.1 format files become unsyncable in Google Drive! In attempt to find out why, I've tried to open a previous 3.0 file and saved it with the updated Sketch. Basically 1 more file become unsyncable.

    0 points
  • Sean O'GradySean O'Grady, over 8 years ago

    I have the same issue. Resaving it did nothing for me

    0 points
    • Chris SlowikChris Slowik, over 8 years ago

      did you try duplicate? (not just save)

      or.. worst case you could copy/paste your pages to a new doc.

      0 points
      • Sean O'GradySean O'Grady, over 8 years ago (edited over 8 years ago )

        Yep both, good idea for second point, will try, but it s a large file with multiple boards & pages

        1 point
      • Marko NikolovskiMarko Nikolovski, over 8 years ago

        Number 1, tried, no dice. Number 2… I want to avoid. All else failing, that's what I'm going to do.

        0 points