Saved games are missing and not on iCloud

[lizzie_7654]

Hi, 

I've had games I returned to play multiple times and now they are suddenly gone. Mostly those played in recent months, the only ones available now are older ones that I hadn't played since early in the year. 

As I was completing some of the 'challenges' I did make changes to life span to do so for some of my games and I wondered if this effected what i could and couldn't see - so I did switch it back and forth to see if it changed what I could load. But it didn't seem to make any difference. 

I checked the iCloud and it is NOT set up to take my documents to the cloud as back up. All documents remain on my computer, even since lastest update. 

Any ideas where my saved games might have gone (so I can retrieve them) or what may have happened (so I can avoid in the future)?

Any help is much appreciated. 

Liz 

[kreatora]

@lizzie_7654

Save the new game option "save as ..." then go to the Game Menu, Press the load game button and check what saves you can see.

Another thing that I noticed after the update is that now you have to wait a few minutes for the saves to display. It may or may not depend on the contents of the Tray folder. The tray folder must be connected to the gallery in order for its content to be visible. If there are a lot of objects in Tray then it lasts longer and it is possible that it interferes with the display of saves. I think you have all these files of saves in the folder, only it is not displayed.
Try to move the Tray folder to the desktop and check if it will make any difference

I don't work for EA

[lizzie_7654]

Hi kraetora, 

Thanks for the reply. 

I'm not sure I quite understand. Should I move the files in "saves" to the "tray" folder? Or how can I redirect the gallery to file location? (if that's what you mean).

To clarify these are saved games I have gone and played many times - not a first time save, I always check they are there when I exit so it is weird to come back and find them all missing (except much older games), its not even just the last save or last progress - the entire household is gone. I'm hoping to discover where they are and make them visible, as logically they should be somewhere, especially as I never save to iCloud. I'm guessing this is ultimately what you are suggesting? But I'm not sure if I misunderstood. 

Also I'm not quite sure where to locate the Tray folder or how to change the Sims 4 setting on where it grabs files from (my guess is if moving the tray folder to desktop I'll still have to tell the game to grab files from there otherwise they won't be found?) 

Sorry if I completely misunderstood, I do really appreciate your help. 

Liz 

[kreatora]

@lizzie_7654

You have folder The Sims4 in Documents. In this folder you have many subfolders.
Your saved games are in the Saves folder.
Tray folder - it is your library. When you are saving something to library you see only the image of it in Gallery but saved files are going to the Tray folder.
In fact, all of this you see are only displayed images of the files you have in the Tray folder.
The same is with files of your saves folder. When you press the Load Game button you see only images of files that you have in your saves folder.
But selected files in this folder cannot be deleted - just like that - so they still need to be in the saves folder. Only these files are not displayed when you press the "Load Game" button.
As if the game did not see these files - in other words, the game does not see your saves.
When the game folder is moved the game creates a new empty in its place so there would be no option to see these old saves. So it must still be in your game folder and I'm trying to find out the reason why the game - or computer - can't see these files.
I see you are feeling not comfortable with idea moving folders to the desktop. (Folders are these yellow books, files are inside it and look like pages.) So forget about it.
Go to the Origin, select My game library and right-click on the cover of TS4. Select the option "repair game" and press it. You have to wait until Origin will fix all packs, not only the base game.

But there is a weird option also that the computer is seeing only the old folder but you are playing in the second one that is in another place where the computer can't see it.
Go also to the game and take some screenshots when playing. These screenshots will go to the same place where saves are. Then try to find your second game folder (if it is existing but you are not able to see it). Instructions are here
https://sims4.crinrict.com/eng/2018/07/how-to-find-your-user-folder/

[lizzie_7654]

Thanks again kreatora, 

I did locate the saved files and I checked them against the file locations for the games that are being displayed in game. Apparently all of my saved files are being shown as every file name is accounted for. So I have no idea where the other files have disappeared to. I tried spotlight search for files with similar names to the saved extensions but with no luck. e.g "Slot_00000008.save.ver1" (I searched for anything 'slot' and found nothing out of place).

I've check iCloud in case something got up there but its also empty for documents and searched my computer for any folder called 'saves' (but only found the one I already found in the Sims 4 folder) so I think I might have to give up.

While searching my mac, I have discovered Spotlight is not working properly so I reset that in Terminal. Then will try again to see if the search has any luck. But as it stands everything in the 'saves' folder is showing up in the load game areas and I can't find any other folders for Electronic Arts or Sims 4 anywhere so I think it might be a dead end. 

Thanks for your help. 

Liz 

[Bluebellflora]

@lizzie_7654

Moved your thread to the Mac forum. Which version of macOS are you running?

[lizzie_7654]

Hi @Bluebellflora ,

Thank you, my apologies, I didn't realise I was in the wrong forum.  

I'm running: 

Mac OS High Sierra Version 10.13.6

Thanks again, 

Liz

[Bluebellflora]

@lizzie_7654 

Thanks  Please could you click on your Sims 4 folder once to select it then go to File > Get Info. Under the General > Where section near the top of the info window please copy and paste the location of the folder here.