Transferring Skyrim saved games from one machine to another

Is there a way of easily transferring a saved game from one machine to another?

  1. PC to PC
  2. XBox to XBox
  3. PS3 to PS3
  4. Cross platform transfers

This should work for Skyrim just like it does for other games:

For PC to PC, you can go to the "User/Documents/My Games/Skyrim" folder and simply copy the "Saves" folder from one machine to the corresponding folder on the other machine.

For XBox 360, here's a guide on how to transfer saved games:

  • Put your OLD hard drive into your new XBox 360
  • Log in to your profile
  • Go to the profile management
  • Move your profile onto the Memory Unit
  • Examine your hard drive with memory management tool
  • Move the game to your memory unit with Move option
  • Turn off and remove the old hard drive
  • Then put the new hard drive
  • Log in as the profile from the memory unit
  • Transfer all the game save files

For PS3, here's a good video guide on how to generally move save games and here's a guide on how to transfer save games from PC to the PS3, although it's possible that this just works with saved games which are originally from a PS3.


PC to 360 works using a 360 formatted USB stick. Unsure about other consoles. Reddit post here: http://www.reddit.com/r/skyrim/comments/mfgrp/psa_you_can_transfer_skyrim_savegame_files_from/

Copy the save to your 360 Formatted USB Drive. Open with Modio. Click open from device locate the save file and open it. Click the file contents tab. Extract savegame.dat rename to savegame.ess and put it into your Skyrim save game location.


I recently solved the data transfer issue for Skyrim on the PS3.None of the answers above helped at all,and like "lildominoe" I was able to save and transfer the data to a USB but not save afterwards.

It said something like this game is saved under another user. It literally won't let you even press the save button though you can play the game from where you saved off your USB. It took me a couple hours and a little playing around so I'm giving you the exact steps of what I did.

The Solution

  1. Save your old game save data to a USB (I don't have much so I used 2GB)
  2. Log out of PlayStation Network. This hides your "user" until you sign in again,I also deleted my user on PlayStation home screen as well.
  3. Make sure new PS3 has no users and log into P.S. Network under your old username and password. Now you have just transfered the "user" that Skyrim recognized as the user for that save.
  4. Create a new home screen user. I used the same name as the old machine in case the game tried to recognize that as well.
  5. Load Skyrim saved game data under your old user and all that and ENJOY!!

I hope this helps. I am getting ready to repeat the process.

Don't ever buy a used system,and the fat models at that! I did it once when I got the YLOD. I used hair dryer in box to get it to stay on long enough to get my disc and the above recovery of an AWESOME SAVE!! But I went cheap and bought a used system from a friend. Lasted bout a month (enough to get me to Lv 24, I was at Lv 9 I think on my first system) but like most it's YLOD'd on me also (both the old fatgirl systems!)

So time to see if I can follow my own advice and do it again, hairdryer and all. If so I'll leave this post as is. If not I will update in the next 2 hours. Good luck, I hope it works for you and helps get you back to the wonderful world of Skrim!!ENJOY!!