Migrated SharePoint 2010 workflow cannot be opened Online in SharePoint Designer 2013

On migration of SharePoint 2010 site to SharePoint Online, it is supported that SharePoint Designer workflows are migrated also. They are classified in their new destination as 'SharePoint 2010 workflows'. There is a difference though qua maintenance tooling: one has to switch from using SharePoint Designer 2010 to SharePoint Designer 2013 edition. Such a switch may result in an issue: "SharePoint designer cannot display the item".

The root cause of this is within the cache-handling of SharePoint Designer. Both the 2010 and 2013 versions use the same local location on your workstation to store cached files. However, the structure within the cached files is not forwards-compatible from SharePoint Designer 2010 to 2013. To resolve the error, one can apply the following approaches:

1. Disable usage of 'cache' capability in SharePoint Designer 2013: it will then no longer try to load + reuse the cached files that were initially created on your workstation by opening the workflow via SharePoint Designer 2010
2. Cleanup the local cache to remove the SharePoint 2010 versions of the cached workflow files: delete all cached files from these local locations (Resource: SharePoint Designer cannot display the item (SharePoint 2013))
   • C:\Users\<UserName>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\SharePoint Designer\ProxyAssembleCache
   • C:\Users\<UserName>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Web Server Extensions\Cache
   • C:\Users\<UserName>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WebsiteCache
3. (Get yourself a new / other laptop:) Open the workflow in SharePoint Designer on another workstation, on which the workflow was not managed previously via SharePoint Designer 2010 when still on SharePoint 2010