Not able to Access previous saves on mac

Question

Hello! This is my first post to forums but I am totally at a loss. I’ve had my mac for around 5 years and the storage got pretty full, so I recently got a portable hard dive and moved my games to it successfully and have been able to play fine for the past few months. I just updated my mac system to catalina last night and now when I launch sims it will not show my previous games, but they are still in the save file. I have done some trouble shooting with what I’ve been able to find online, such as making sure icloud is disable for documents and files and making sure the game isn’t in too many folders. I have created a new sim and placed it in the game with no issues. I also deleted the userdata.lock file. Is there anything else I can do to allow my game to access the old saves?&nbsp;

bluebellflora · Answer

@starryfawn&nbsp;

Please could you click on the saves folder once to select it then go to File &gt; Get Info. Under the General &gt; Where section near the top of the info window please copy and paste the location of the folder here.

starryfawn · Answer

it saysLocation: Seagate Portable / The Sims 4

bluebellflora · Answer

@starryfawn

That's why they aren't loading, because they are on an external drive. The game will only look in Documents > Electronic Arts for a Sims 4 folder containing saves etc. If it cannot find one it will recreate the Sims 4 folder (unless you have created a symlink to store the folder on the external and create an alias in the local Electronic Arts folder?).

Can you move the saves into the local Documents > Electronic Arts > The Sims 4 folder > saves folder, where the new save should be that you created?

starryfawn · Answer

I will try that! I have not had any issues previously, and have been using the seagate for a few months now to save space! I thought I had everything transferred over properly, and even have origin set to know that games are installed and on the drive.&nbsp;

bluebellflora · Answer

@starryfawn

Origin installing the game on the external is separate from where your Sims 4 user data folder is that stores your saves/mods/tray/screenshots etc. This explains about the symlink option - https://bluebellflora.com/2020/03/01/if-youre-running-out-of-space-to-play-the-sims-here-are-your-options-for-storing-your-data-externally/

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Not able to Access previous saves on mac

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