ok so if i go to iCloud drive> Documents>Electronic arts>the sims 4>saves all my saves are there. from 2017-2023. even my most recent ones from march 31, 2023 at 4:40am is there. but its still not showing up in my game properly. its showing the last family i played as, as being a single mom with her toddler and child. but when i played with them last (on the 31st) she had 2 children and her boyfriend had joined the household and she aged up. I'm just so confused by all this. the thumbnail is still missing and the lots still orange. when i go into cas on the sims that have the red and white it removes it and says the mods may not be downloaded? but i know for a fact i didn't delete my mods or cc. this is just making no sense to me.
I ended up deleting all my mods/cc because it seems all my more recent mods had been deleted anyway. I have so many saves that are taking up storage but idk which ones i can get rid of. I moved some of my older saves into a folder on my desktop to try and load my newer saves. I'm still having the issue of them not loading properly.. oh and my game keeps saying packs aren't installed when they are? i will get pop-ups of every.single.pack that i have when i boot up the game.
This is one of your saves that the game can read and load if it is in the correct location in [USER] > Documents > Electronic Art > The Sims 4 > saves:
Slot_00000005.save
These are examples of your saves files that will not load:
Slot_00000005 2.save Slot_00000005 2.save. 2 Slot_00000005.save 2.ver4 Slot_00000005.save copy Slot_00000005.save.dw Slot_00000005.save.n Slot_00000203.save. Slot_00000206.savee
This is a a backup version of a save:
Slot_00000203.save.ver1
For help with backup saves read Crin's excellent guide here https://sims4.crinrict.com/eng/2014/09/backups/
For some reason you also have saves as TextEdit files. These will not load.
See those little up and down arrows and clouds? That is your Mac moving files to iCloud. Save files solely in iCloud > Documents > Electronic Arts > The Sims 4 > saves will not load. If you read the opening post in this guide it explains that you MUST free up internal space, disable iCloud Drive, and Optimise Storage. Once you have done that, and trashed all those irrelevant saves files, and started with a new clean, mod free game, you could move the Slot_00000203.save into the brand new saves folder, on its own, and see if the game will load it. If it's still blank the save is corrupted and you've lost it.
I think i'm just going to have to accept defeat at this point. The only save file that works is from a month ago. my build world can't be recovered and all the items in my library are gone. RIP to all my progress and builds. thank you for trying to help
