I have this problem also and it's very frustrating.
In some sense my edges must be planer because I can generally break the face into smaller and smaller triangles, all of which become individual faces, until I finally coax the final rectangle to become a face. Then I go back and delete all of the triangle lines except the original outer perimeter and I have a face.
It's frustrating because the outer lines are planer or they're not. If SketchUp can finally make a face after I've broken it into many triangles it is planer but for some reason SketchUp doesn't 'know' this until I've gone through this process of breaking it up into smaller and smaller triangles.