Sims 4 won't use my save folder, keeps making new one. PLEASE help, freaking out

[Emily3531]

PLEASE READ EVERYTHING BEFORE DECIDING TO IGNORE THIS. You could be the answer to my very nerve-racking problem.

Okay, so I should start by saying I'm going to try to explain everything correctly, but I have never posted on any forum ever and I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm obviously very panicked as I stated and I feel like my last resort is hoping that someone out there will see this post and be able to know what to do. This has to do with mods, so I may not be able to call EA support, in which case my sims save may be lost forever. I have spent literally 1066 hours on the Sims 4, it's the only game I play and for the third time, I'm desperate, scared, and panicked that all those hours are simply gone. I have had corrupt files, and figured out exactly how resolve it on my own pretty easily but I've been looking at help pages and forums all day and am getting nowhere. 

I will finally get to the problem. I have a MacBook if that's important. I have been wanting to try mods for the first time for about a year, yet had never even looked at the mods folder in my files. Today, I finally decided to try it, watched videos on how to install them, and just tried one. I moved it into my mod folder, it was a .package file, and opened my game. It didn't show up in my game or my list of mods in the game. I would like to make it clear, I have been on every forum troubleshooting all day and I know for a fact I have tried all the usual fixes. No matter what I do, for whatever reason, mods/cc are not showing up in my game. I finally saw someone talk about the paths to the file you need to correct. For example, I've had my computer's path as "Where: ‎⁨iCloud Drive⁩ ▸ ⁨Documents⁩ ▸ ⁨Electronic Arts⁩ ▸ ⁨The Sims 4⁩", and I was told it needs to be "Users > [your Mac user account/home folder name]* > Documents > Electronic Arts > The Sims 4" for mods. I realized this is the issue, and should be honed in on. So I dove into it further, and starting playing around with where to move the file.

If you've read this far I very much appreciate you.

So, I moved it. I took my electronic arts folder, and moved it out of the iCloud path. It might be worth mentioning I did this by moving my documents folder out of iCloud to make sure the path had nothing to do with iCloud. This was my mistake. I started moving folders and changing settings and somewhere, I made a huge mistake which I cannot decipher. I opened my Sims game, and it's COMPLETELY NEW. They're showing me all the packs I own as if I've never seen the pop ups when I buy them, and there's no load game button, and they're asking me if I've ever played the Sims before or if I need a tutorial. This very quickly sent me into a panic and just saying "no" over and over in my room by myself. I'm a tOucH disturbed.

Again, thank you for getting this far. 

What I have done and am stuck with now, is constantly trying to delete the new "Sims 4" that the game keeps making, hoping to get it to use my 1.88 GB file with 1000 hours of my life in it. I'm great with computers and I think I've gotten a good idea of what I'm supposed to do, but it just keeps making a new folder in my files!! I'm looking at my sims icon in my dock and thinking I may never get to play my old game again. 

I am absolutely not kidding, if someone can fix this problem, I wil be happy tol Venmo you $50. I'm very dramatic and oversensitive, and EmOtioNaL right now and would be beyond grateful to the person that's able to get my game back to normal. All I wanted to do was try to install some new clothes and play sims for the rest of the day, now I'm here.

PLEASE ask any and as many questions as you need to, nothing would make me feel better than having people engage with this and try to help.

[Emily3531 · Accepted solution]

UPDATE: This post is mortifying and I should delete it but instead I'm going to leave it up and hope that someone that was in my situation will see this. And honestly I think it's funny. 

Not 10 minutes after posting this, I was looking up more posts and saw someone say if you rename your sims 4 folder, the game won't recognize it and it will make a new one... I have had my folders all renamed because I kept trying to organize all the new folders they were making!! Ironic. So I renamed my folder back to "Sims 4", and boom everything was fine, completely back to normal. I literally almost cried. Moral of the story: DON'T RENAME YOUR SIMS FILES, KIDS.

So anyone that's reading this, hello, and I hope your day was much better than mine was.

[Emily3531 · Accepted solution]

UPDATE: This post is mortifying and I should delete it but instead I'm going to leave it up and hope that someone that was in my situation will see this. And honestly I think it's funny. 

Not 10 minutes after posting this, I was looking up more posts and saw someone say if you rename your sims 4 folder, the game won't recognize it and it will make a new one... I have had my folders all renamed because I kept trying to organize all the new folders they were making!! Ironic. So I renamed my folder back to "Sims 4", and boom everything was fine, completely back to normal. I literally almost cried. Moral of the story: DON'T RENAME YOUR SIMS FILES, KIDS.

So anyone that's reading this, hello, and I hope your day was much better than mine was.

[Bluebellflora]

@Emily3531

Thanks for coming back and confirming what worked in the end

Renaming or moving the Sims 4 folder (Documents > Electronic Arts > The Sims 4) is the most basic troubleshooting step for when the game doesn't work and absolutely should be done when trying to fix a game that will not load. More info on that here - https://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Issues-Mac/READ-FIRST-Sims-4-Mac-Help-Guides-and-Troubleshooting... but it is not relevant to the problem you had which is why the issue escalated for you.

Your issue initially was iCloud Drive which is explained here https://bluebellflora.com/2017/02/06/sims-3-and-sims-4-not-loading-save-games/

[SnowtheCatto]

I'm having the same issue and Origin keeps making a new folder causing me to lose my saves, I renamed the folder back to "The Sims 4" and it still won't work. I'm pretty sure the name of the folder was the issue. Do you have any ideas of what to do now?

UPDATE: If you copy everything from the old Sims 4 Folder then past it into the new one that Origin makes it fixes it

[Bluebellflora]

@SnowtheCatto

Origin does not make the Sims 4 folder. The game creates this folder when it is launched and there is not already a folder present (see instruction in my post directly above yours). Do not copy everything from the old folder into the new one, move the files and folders in small batches, testing the game after each batch is added again, as per the instructions above. If the problem is in that user data you will just run into the same problem again by moving all the contents over.