"Opening the Selected ArcGIS project failed: This project was saved using a newer version of ArcGIS Pro"

[VeronicaMcCall]

Does anyone know why I'm getting this error when trying to open current projects that previously crashed? They seemed to crash due to geoprocessing or saving the project. 

[JenniferOtter]

This is happening to me in 2.9 with multiple projects.   Unfortunately, none of the workarounds are working and the bug # mentioned above is no longer in their system...

[GeneOlig]

Bug has been escalated with ESRI.

[JenniferOtter]

That's weird.  Searching for that bug# gets me nothing.  Thanks! 

[zhenghan]

Thanks for sharing this and yes similar approach works out for me.

I didn't even try to open another working project first. I started the ArcGIS pro without template and then open the ppkx and it just worked directly. 

My broken project is a ppkx (project package) generated using another machine. The reason I had to do this was that I accidently worked on a project using ArcGIS pro 3.0 and then I needed to make project file accessible from 2.x version, so I generated a ppkx using 3.0 and attempted to open the ppkx from another machine which only has 2.x. It failed when I tried to open it directly from file explorer but it worked if I opened it from inside ArcGIS Pro.

[Thomas82]

This error happened to me after a corruption with the flash drive the project was saved onto. Having a backup which was a few weeks behind the project helped only because I transferred the uncorrupted project file (.aprx) to the most recent folder that had the broken project file (but contained all of the relevant up to date files associated with the project). I replaced it with the older working project file and my project was ultimately unaffected luckily enough. However, ESRI need to get this fixed. Essentially the fix comes from replacing your broken .aprx file with an older version from the same project. That is the only way I could retrieve my work.

Step one: Remove broken project file from the workspace directory.

Step two: Insert project file from previous save.

This simple solution should allow you to open the project again from the most recent save.

[LaraHughes-Allen1]

Hi all,

I have recently experienced this same problem. I haven't run any updates and ArcPro didn't crash, but now I am receiving the message about my project having been saved in a newer version, which is obviously not the case. Is there anyway to access the files in the project file? 

[VirginiaHebert]

I ended up having to revert back to an archived version of the project.  

[AndrewKuka]

Hi, I had this problem and solved it by copying the ArcGIS Project file and opening the copy. Why would it open if the original file does not? IDK, but it does.

[sondickerson]

Just a guess, but it might be because the path names are too long.   Using Arcgis Pro version 3.2.1, I tried to open a project that had 191 characters in the path name and got this same error:  Failed to Open Project - Opening the selected arcgis project failed.  This project was saved using a newer version of Arcgis Pro: .

I copied the project and contents to a  C:/temp and it works now.  So perhaps the problem is because the path names are so long.  

[LancasterGIS]

Just has this problem occur - the project file got completed erased (0kb). We have file history in place so I was able to recover the file, but this is very alarming. I have never had a program completely erase it's own file.