Basically lost everything

I was trying to clear storage on my computer's drive so I moved the EA App's files to the external drive which the app can access. I can see all my sims 4 files in there, all my information that I know of, but I boot up the game and there's nothing. None of my played saves, basically none of the sims/households I saved to my gallery (except one displayed on my profile), nothing. And the app isn't remaining open when I open the game so I have no idea if that is why or if it was something stupid I did. I tried a lot of things (repairing the app, moving the files around again, etc) except straight up uninstalling the app and reinstalling. I am genuinely at a loss. I just want to be able to play those saves again, have those sims back.

Most of my sims stuff is kept on the external drive and it's always plugged into my laptop. Please help me, I desperately want this fixed.