Sims/lots don’t show in library

[T0XICM0CHI]

Ok so I’m posting this here to see if anyone can help me until I figure this out . So I didn’t have enough room on my computer for the new update so I moved my sims games onto my external hard drive and updated the sims 4. The update worked so I opened my game to enable cc and mods and turns out nothing was there. All my saves and sims are gone. I checked in the folder on my computer and literally all the sims and saves I’ve had in the past are still in the saves/tray folder, they just don’t show up in my game. Is there a way to fix this or am I just gonna have to live without my sims?

[puzzlezaddict · Accepted solution]

@T0XICM0CHI  Did you simply move the Sims 4 user data folder, the one normally in Documents\Electronic Arts, to your external hard drive?  The game can't read it there and will just create a new copy of the folder in the usual place.

To keep your user data on an external drive, you'll need to use a symbolic link to tell the game where to look.  Please see this guide for instructions:

https://crinrict.com/blog/2020/02/moving-windows-documents-folder-to-external-drive-via-symbolic-lin...

It's important to get the commands exactly right.  If you've already moved your Sims 4 folder to the external and haven't moved it back, you can skip the Cut and Paste steps; just go to the part where you use the MKLINK command to create a symlink.  Be sure to move or delete the Sims 4 folder in Documents\Electronic Arts first though, because the system won't create a second file or folder with the same name in the same location.

[puzzlezaddict · Accepted solution]

@T0XICM0CHI  Did you simply move the Sims 4 user data folder, the one normally in Documents\Electronic Arts, to your external hard drive?  The game can't read it there and will just create a new copy of the folder in the usual place.

To keep your user data on an external drive, you'll need to use a symbolic link to tell the game where to look.  Please see this guide for instructions:

https://crinrict.com/blog/2020/02/moving-windows-documents-folder-to-external-drive-via-symbolic-lin...

It's important to get the commands exactly right.  If you've already moved your Sims 4 folder to the external and haven't moved it back, you can skip the Cut and Paste steps; just go to the part where you use the MKLINK command to create a symlink.  Be sure to move or delete the Sims 4 folder in Documents\Electronic Arts first though, because the system won't create a second file or folder with the same name in the same location.

[T0XICM0CHI]

@puzzlezaddict OMG that worked!  thank you so much!! I literally never you have figured this out without your help!