I reinstalled origin and ts4, can't see old saves/sims

[Rowlena]

A few weeks ago, my computer crashed and I had to get it fixed.  I'm not exactly sure what was wrong with it, but I had to reinstall everything, including Origin and all of my TS4 content.  I've noticed that all of my saves are gone as is anything I've ever worked on that I've saved to my personal gallery, but shared publicly.  I have all of my documents because I recently backed up my computer.  I can go into Electronic Arts/The Sims 4 and see everything in that folder, including saves and mods.  I was reading online that you can take a save that ends in ver0 and delete that part by renaming the file, but I've tried that and nothing happens.  Can someone help me?  Are all of my sims really lost?  That would be pretty sad.

[puzzlezaddict · Accepted solution]

@Rowlena  Try creating a clean folder and placing your old saves there.  First, move your entire Sims 4 game folder out of Documents\Electronic Arts and onto your desktop.  Launch the game, start a new save (no need to spend much time on it; this is just for testing), save, quit, reload to make sure the save is still showing, and quit again.

Now move just one of your old saves from your old game folder to your new one.  Don't move any mods or cc, or any other files.  Make sure the save you move ends in .save, not .save.verx (or delete the .verx extension), and that the save you're moving doesn't have the same number, likely 00000002, as the save you just created.  Reload the game and see whether your old save is available to load.  If it is, you can move your other saves over as well; be sure to check whether they also show up.

If the save you move isn't listed at the Main Menu, put it aside.  You can still try your other saves, including the ones with a .verx on the end (again, delete the extension).  Just make sure you're never moving over two saves with exactly the same name, since you don't want one to overwrite another.

You can also move the contents of your Tray folder from your old game folder to the new one, and hopefully the households and builds you've saved will show up in the in-game library.  It's more difficult to move Tray files over in batches, since each library entry has several separate files associated with it, all of which need to be present.  But you can try sorting by last modified date and moving them in groups.

[puzzlezaddict · Accepted solution]

@Rowlena  Try creating a clean folder and placing your old saves there.  First, move your entire Sims 4 game folder out of Documents\Electronic Arts and onto your desktop.  Launch the game, start a new save (no need to spend much time on it; this is just for testing), save, quit, reload to make sure the save is still showing, and quit again.

Now move just one of your old saves from your old game folder to your new one.  Don't move any mods or cc, or any other files.  Make sure the save you move ends in .save, not .save.verx (or delete the .verx extension), and that the save you're moving doesn't have the same number, likely 00000002, as the save you just created.  Reload the game and see whether your old save is available to load.  If it is, you can move your other saves over as well; be sure to check whether they also show up.

If the save you move isn't listed at the Main Menu, put it aside.  You can still try your other saves, including the ones with a .verx on the end (again, delete the extension).  Just make sure you're never moving over two saves with exactly the same name, since you don't want one to overwrite another.

You can also move the contents of your Tray folder from your old game folder to the new one, and hopefully the households and builds you've saved will show up in the in-game library.  It's more difficult to move Tray files over in batches, since each library entry has several separate files associated with it, all of which need to be present.  But you can try sorting by last modified date and moving them in groups.

[Rowlena]

Thank you so much for your advice!  I didn't realize that all the saves and tray files I had were located in a backup, not in my documents anymore, so that's why they didn't show up.  I just pasted them in and voilà!  Thanks again; I'm so glad that I didn't lose some of my favorite builds and households--you made my day!!!