the sims 4 is undownloading repeatedly when i put in my old cc folder

what the title says. on friday, my game wasnt opening at all so i removed some problematic cc then extracted my cc, tray, and save file folders and put it on my desktop. when i went to repair the game, it then told me i needed to redownload because the game wasn't installed when it obviously was. i was in the proper ea folder and everything. i came back to it sunday night and deleted the original version of the game i had, and tried to redownload the game, which worked. since it worked, i closed out the window and went to put my original cc, tray and save files back into the same folders, but when i went back to the ea app, it told me to reinstall the game again???

i uninstalled the ea app and that version of the game and downloaded the app off the website again but to no prevail, it did the same thing again when i put my old folders back. whats going on? i dont want to restart my game from scratch, ive been playing for 3 years.

edit: btw this is on Mac, i misclicked when i made this posts. its my first time...