Overview
jump to:  Restoring missing saves
jump to:  I want OneDrive to keep syncing my files
jump to:  I don't want OneDrive to sync my files
jump to:  I want to get rid of OneDrive
jump to:  My saves aren't in OneDrive
jump to:  My saves still aren't appearing in-game

In Windows, the most common cause of Sims 4 saves or other user files disappearing is OneDrive.  User files are stored in Documents > Electronic Arts > The Sims 4, and if no Sims 4 folder is present there, the game will make a new one with no content.  It won't look elsewhere for saves or other user content.

OneDrive syncs the contents of Documents to cloud storage by default.  This syncing may have worked fine for some time, but it can fail for one reason or another, and the result is that the user files are removed from local storage.  Then when Sims 4 is loaded, saves, Tray files, and mods and custom content are missing, with the only option being to start a new save.

If you have a Mac, please use this thread instead:

[READ FIRST] Saves, CC/Mods or Library items disappeared? iCloud issues | EA Forums - 10979712

↑

Restoring missing saves

The first place to look for missing files is within OneDrive's cloud storage.  Go to onedrive.com, click Sign in in the upper-right corner, and enter the email address and password associated with your Microsoft account.  Please check both My files and the Recyle bin for your missing content.  OneDrive does only preserve data in the Recycle bin for 30 days for a free basic account, or 93 days for some premium accounts.  If that time has passed, the files may be permanently deleted.

If you find your missing files, click them to select, then right-click and select Restore:

Once you've downloaded the files from OneDrive, you may need to rename them or move them to the correct folder, as in, the one Sims 4 is reading.  If you need more help with this process, please read this.

To prevent this in the future, you can change OneDrive's settings.

Or you can stop syncing or get rid of OneDrive entirely.

If you've never used OneDrive, or it doesn't have your saves, please see this.

↑

I want OneDrive to keep syncing my files

If your OneDrive has enough space for all your files, the simplest workaround is to tell OneDrive to keep the Sims 4 user folder on your computer.  Right-click the folder and select \"Always keep on this device.\"

Please double-check that OneDrive has enough storage, or you may run into more trouble.  Right-click the OneDrive icon in the lower-right corner of your screen and select Settings:

Under Account, you'll see the current and total storage:

If your OneDrive is full, or your \"The Sims 4\" folder is larger than the storage you have, you can choose to stop automatically syncing Documents overall, or the Sims 4 folder, or some subfolder, for example the Mods folder.  (Please see the next section below.)  You can still manually upload files to OneDrive as you choose.  Or you can buy a subscription for more OneDrive storage.  However, an external drive or USB stick is a one-time purchase and a cheaper long-term solution than a subscription, so consider your options before subscribing.

↑

I don't want OneDrive to sync my files

The first step is to make a backup of your \"The Sims 4\" folder, the one in Documents > Electronic Arts.  Right-click it and select Copy, then right-click the location where you want your backup to go and select Paste.  If you don't have an external drive or USB stick handy, you can paste the folder into your computer's Downloads folder, which OneDrive doesn't sync.

The simplest change is to tell OneDrive not to sync the contents of Documents at all.  Right-click the OneDrive icon in the lower-right corner of the screen, select Settings > Backup, click Manage Backup, and under Documents, click Stop backup, then confirm the choice.

Now you can restore the backup version of your Sims 4 folder to Documents > Electronic Arts, and the game should read your data.  If you're not seeing your saves in-game, please read this.

If you want to get more granular, you can choose to not sync the contents of the Electronic Arts folder, the Sims 4 folder, or any folder inside.  First, make a backup of this folder; as above, you can store it on an external device, or in Downloads.

Right-click the OneDrive icon in the lower-right corner of the screen, open Settings > Account, select Choose folders, deselect the folders you don't want OneDrive to sync, and click Okay.

Once you deselect the given folder, it will be removed from your computer and stored only in the cloud.  You can now restore the backup copy you made, and OneDrive won't sync it.  If you forgot to back up this folder, you can still download it from onedrive.com.

If you're not seeing your saves in-game, please read this.

↑

I want to get rid of OneDrive

If you want to get rid of OneDrive entirely, first make a backup of any synced folders you want to keep.  You can right-click the folders and select Copy, then right-click where you want the backups to be and select Paste.  An external drive or USB stick is ideal, but if you don't have one handy, you can use your computer's Downloads folder, which OneDrive doesn't sync.  You can also find your files later by signing into your Microsoft account at onedrive.com.

Right-click the OneDrive icon in the lower-right corner of your screen, select Settings > Backup, click Manage Backup, and click Stop backup for all three categories, then confirm the choice.

The reason to do this is to move the default locations of these folders out of the OneDrive folder on your computer, which might otherwise be a more complicated process.  Next, right-click the OneDrive icon in the lower-right corner of your screen and select Settings > Account, then click Unlink this PC.  It's unnecessary to uninstall OneDrive—without a link to a Microsoft account, it has nothing to do.

After the above and before you do anything else, please double-check that your Documents folder is no longer in OneDrive.  Type \"command\" in the Windows search box, open Command Prompt, and enter this command:

reg query \"HKCU\\Software\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Explorer\\Shell Folders\" /v \"Personal\"

This will spit out the location of the Documents directory for this Windows account.  The file path should no longer include OneDrive, but if it does, as here:

Then you'll need to change the location manually.

The simple way is to right-click Documents in the left panel of a File Explorer window and choose Properties > Location, then Move, then click This PC, then choose this:

C:\\Users\\[your username]\\Documents

Click Apply, then Yes.  You may get an error that says \"Can't move the folder because there is a folder in the same location that can't be redirected.\"  The normal workaround is to stop OneDrive from backing up the location of Documents, as described above.  If this hasn't helped, you can change the location of Documents by editing the relevant registry entry:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/operation-to-change-a-personal-folder-location-fails-in-windows-ffb95139-6dbb-821d-27ec-62c9aaccd720

Please be very careful when editing your computer's registry.  One simple typo can have significant consequences.  Make a backup before you do anything: click File > Export, and save a copy of the entire registry.  If you mess up the edit, just restore the backup by double-clicking the saved file.  You can check your work with the same Command Prompt command as above.

This also applies to the Desktop and Pictures folders if they've previously been directed to OneDrive.

↑

My saves aren't in OneDrive

If you don't use OneDrive, or you can't find your saves there, you can search your computer for the saves.  Open a File Explorer window, click This PC in the left panel, and enter Slot_ in the search field in the upper-right corner.  When the scan finishes, if it's found any saves, click one and select the \"Open file location\" menu button (or right-click the file and select \"Open file location\"), and you'll jump to wherever the save is, which will hopefully be where the rest of your user files are.

Move the saves and any other files you'd like to keep to the relevant subfolders within the Sims 4 folder the game is reading, as it appears in-game:

https://sims4.crinrict.com/eng/2018/07/how-to-find-your-user-folder/

If your saves still aren't appearing in-game, please read this.

If your content has disappeared, and it's not hidden on your computer and not in OneDrive, it's worth doing a virus scan.  This is not to say you definitely have a virus, only that it's a good idea to check.  Download Malwarebytes (the free trial is fine) from here:

https://www.malwarebytes.com/mwb-download

Open it, click Scan > Custom Scan > Configure Scan, check all the boxes for all scans and for all your drives, and let it do its job.  This can take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours, so you may want to set the scan to run while you're doing something else.  If you'd like someone to take a look at the results, please start your own thread and attach the report.

↑

My saves still aren't appearing in-game

The two common reasons your saves and other user files might not load in-game is that they're in the wrong folder or they're named improperly.  To make sure the files are in the correct folder, load the game and find the full file path to that folder, as described here:

https://sims4.crinrict.com/eng/2018/07/how-to-find-your-user-folder/

To see the full file path of a given file or folder, right-click it and select Properties > General, then look for the Location.

If you're having trouble opening the correct folder, click This PC in a File Explorer window instead, then double-click the correct drive (probably C), and open the corresponding folders from there.

OneDrive may also have renamed the saves to avoid duplicate files or folders.  For example, after changing some settings back and forth, I wound up with this in my saves folder:

Saves need to be named in a specific format: Slot_ followed by an eight-digit hexidecimal (base-16, so numbers 0 to 9, letters a to f) number followed by .save , with no extra characters.  Each save needs to have a unique number as well.  All of these are valid save names:

Slot_00000006.save
Slot_0000000c.save
Slot_00000012.save

In the above screenshot, for the affected saves (red arrows), I would delete the - Copy and the space and also renumber the saves, as other saves already have those same numbers.  The order in which you number the saves doesn't matter.  Choose whatever names are convenient for you, although Sims 4 has occasionally been unable to read saves that start with a digit other than 0.

Saves with a .verx on the end are backups of your main saves: the game saves the data from the last five times you saved your progress before the current one.  These can be renamed in the same way; once the .verx extension is deleted, the game will read these files as well.

The same principles apply to Tray files: they need to be named properly and in the correct Tray folder.  But because Tray file names can be more difficult to work with than saves, please start your own thread asking for help if you need it.  In that case, include a screenshot or two of the contents of Tray so that the person helping you can identify the problem.  Include the address bar, above the list of files, in the screenshot, as in my saves screenshot above.

↑

Overview
jump to:  Restoring missing saves
jump to:  I want OneDrive to keep syncing my files
jump to:  I don't want OneDrive to sync my files
jump to:  I want to get rid of OneDrive
jump to:  My saves aren't in OneDrive
jump to:  My saves still aren't appearing in-game

In Windows, the most common cause of Sims 4 saves or other user files disappearing is OneDrive.  User files are stored in Documents > Electronic Arts > The Sims 4, and if no Sims 4 folder is present there, the game will make a new one with no content.  It won't look elsewhere for saves or other user content.

OneDrive syncs the contents of Documents to cloud storage by default.  This syncing may have worked fine for some time, but it can fail for one reason or another, and the result is that the user files are removed from local storage.  Then when Sims 4 is loaded, saves, Tray files, and mods and custom content are missing, with the only option being to start a new save.

If you have a Mac, please use this thread instead:

[READ FIRST] Saves, CC/Mods or Library items disappeared? iCloud issues | EA Forums - 10979712

↑

Restoring missing saves

The first place to look for missing files is within OneDrive's cloud storage.  Go to onedrive.com, click Sign in in the upper-right corner, and enter the email address and password associated with your Microsoft account.  Please check both My files and the Recyle bin for your missing content.  OneDrive does only preserve data in the Recycle bin for 30 days for a free basic account, or 93 days for some premium accounts.  If that time has passed, the files may be permanently deleted.

If you find your missing files, click them to select, then right-click and select Restore:

Once you've downloaded the files from OneDrive, you may need to rename them or move them to the correct folder, as in, the one Sims 4 is reading.  If you need more help with this process, please read this.

To prevent this in the future, you can change OneDrive's settings.

Or you can stop syncing or get rid of OneDrive entirely.

If you've never used OneDrive, or it doesn't have your saves, please see this.

↑

I want OneDrive to keep syncing my files

If your OneDrive has enough space for all your files, the simplest workaround is to tell OneDrive to keep the Sims 4 user folder on your computer.  Right-click the folder and select \"Always keep on this device.\"

Please double-check that OneDrive has enough storage, or you may run into more trouble.  Right-click the OneDrive icon in the lower-right corner of your screen and select Settings:

Under Account, you'll see the current and total storage:

If your OneDrive is full, or your \"The Sims 4\" folder is larger than the storage you have, you can choose to stop automatically syncing Documents overall, or the Sims 4 folder, or some subfolder, for example the Mods folder.  (Please see the next section below.)  You can still manually upload files to OneDrive as you choose.  Or you can buy a subscription for more OneDrive storage.  However, an external drive or USB stick is a one-time purchase and a cheaper long-term solution than a subscription, so consider your options before subscribing.

↑

I don't want OneDrive to sync my files

The first step is to make a backup of your \"The Sims 4\" folder, the one in Documents > Electronic Arts.  Right-click it and select Copy, then right-click the location where you want your backup to go and select Paste.  If you don't have an external drive or USB stick handy, you can paste the folder into your computer's Downloads folder, which OneDrive doesn't sync.

The simplest change is to tell OneDrive not to sync the contents of Documents at all.  Right-click the OneDrive icon in the lower-right corner of the screen, select Settings > Backup, click Manage Backup, and under Documents, click Stop backup, then confirm the choice.

Now you can restore the backup version of your Sims 4 folder to Documents > Electronic Arts, and the game should read your data.  If you're not seeing your saves in-game, please read this.

If you want to get more granular, you can choose to not sync the contents of the Electronic Arts folder, the Sims 4 folder, or any folder inside.  First, make a backup of this folder; as above, you can store it on an external device, or in Downloads.

Right-click the OneDrive icon in the lower-right corner of the screen, open Settings > Account, select Choose folders, deselect the folders you don't want OneDrive to sync, and click Okay.

Once you deselect the given folder, it will be removed from your computer and stored only in the cloud.  You can now restore the backup copy you made, and OneDrive won't sync it.  If you forgot to back up this folder, you can still download it from onedrive.com.

If you're not seeing your saves in-game, please read this.

↑

I want to get rid of OneDrive

If you want to get rid of OneDrive entirely, first make a backup of any synced folders you want to keep.  You can right-click the folders and select Copy, then right-click where you want the backups to be and select Paste.  An external drive or USB stick is ideal, but if you don't have one handy, you can use your computer's Downloads folder, which OneDrive doesn't sync.  You can also find your files later by signing into your Microsoft account at onedrive.com.

Right-click the OneDrive icon in the lower-right corner of your screen, select Settings > Backup, click Manage Backup, and click Stop backup for all three categories, then confirm the choice.

The reason to do this is to move the default locations of these folders out of the OneDrive folder on your computer, which might otherwise be a more complicated process.  Next, right-click the OneDrive icon in the lower-right corner of your screen and select Settings > Account, then click Unlink this PC.  It's unnecessary to uninstall OneDrive—without a link to a Microsoft account, it has nothing to do.

After the above and before you do anything else, please double-check that your Documents folder is no longer in OneDrive.  Type \"command\" in the Windows search box, open Command Prompt, and enter this command:

reg query \"HKCU\\Software\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Explorer\\Shell Folders\" /v \"Personal\"

This will spit out the location of the Documents directory for this Windows account.  The file path should no longer include OneDrive, but if it does, as here:

Then you'll need to change the location manually.

The simple way is to right-click Documents in the left panel of a File Explorer window and choose Properties > Location, then Move, then click This PC, then choose this:

C:\\Users\\[your username]\\Documents

Click Apply, then Yes.  You may get an error that says \"Can't move the folder because there is a folder in the same location that can't be redirected.\"  The normal workaround is to stop OneDrive from backing up the location of Documents, as described above.  If this hasn't helped, you can change the location of Documents by editing the relevant registry entry:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/operation-to-change-a-personal-folder-location-fails-in-windows-ffb95139-6dbb-821d-27ec-62c9aaccd720

Please be very careful when editing your computer's registry.  One simple typo can have significant consequences.  Make a backup before you do anything: click File > Export, and save a copy of the entire registry.  If you mess up the edit, just restore the backup by double-clicking the saved file.  You can check your work with the same Command Prompt command as above.

This also applies to the Desktop and Pictures folders if they've previously been directed to OneDrive.

↑

My saves aren't in OneDrive

If you don't use OneDrive, or you can't find your saves there, you can search your computer for the saves.  Open a File Explorer window, click This PC in the left panel, and enter Slot_ in the search field in the upper-right corner.  When the scan finishes, if it's found any saves, click one and select the \"Open file location\" menu button (or right-click the file and select \"Open file location\"), and you'll jump to wherever the save is, which will hopefully be where the rest of your user files are.

Move the saves and any other files you'd like to keep to the relevant subfolders within the Sims 4 folder the game is reading, as it appears in-game:

https://sims4.crinrict.com/eng/2018/07/how-to-find-your-user-folder/

If your saves still aren't appearing in-game, please read this.

If your content has disappeared, and it's not hidden on your computer and not in OneDrive, it's worth doing a virus scan.  This is not to say you definitely have a virus, only that it's a good idea to check.  Download Malwarebytes (the free trial is fine) from here:

https://www.malwarebytes.com/mwb-download

Open it, click Scan > Custom Scan > Configure Scan, check all the boxes for all scans and for all your drives, and let it do its job.  This can take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours, so you may want to set the scan to run while you're doing something else.  If you'd like someone to take a look at the results, please start your own thread and attach the report.

↑

My saves still aren't appearing in-game

The two common reasons your saves and other user files might not load in-game is that they're in the wrong folder or they're named improperly.  To make sure the files are in the correct folder, load the game and find the full file path to that folder, as described here:

https://sims4.crinrict.com/eng/2018/07/how-to-find-your-user-folder/

To see the full file path of a given file or folder, right-click it and select Properties > General, then look for the Location.

If you're having trouble opening the correct folder, click This PC in a File Explorer window instead, then double-click the correct drive (probably C), and open the corresponding folders from there.

OneDrive may also have renamed the saves to avoid duplicate files or folders.  For example, after changing some settings back and forth, I wound up with this in my saves folder:

Saves need to be named in a specific format: Slot_ followed by an eight-digit hexidecimal (base-16, so numbers 0 to 9, letters a to f) number followed by .save , with no extra characters.  Each save needs to have a unique number as well.  All of these are valid save names:

Slot_00000006.save
Slot_0000000c.save
Slot_00000012.save

In the above screenshot, for the affected saves (red arrows), I would delete the - Copy and the space and also renumber the saves, as other saves already have those same numbers.  The order in which you number the saves doesn't matter.  Choose whatever names are convenient for you, although Sims 4 has occasionally been unable to read saves that start with a digit other than 0.

Saves with a .verx on the end are backups of your main saves: the game saves the data from the last five times you saved your progress before the current one.  These can be renamed in the same way; once the .verx extension is deleted, the game will read these files as well.

The same principles apply to Tray files: they need to be named properly and in the correct Tray folder.  But because Tray file names can be more difficult to work with than saves, please start your own thread asking for help if you need it.  In that case, include a screenshot or two of the contents of Tray so that the person helping you can identify the problem.  Include the address bar, above the list of files, in the screenshot, as in my saves screenshot above.

↑

I had the same issue. I got into the game and all my saves and CC was gone. Also, the Desert Delux kit (that I got for free) is no longer showing up in-game. The problem might just be even bigger, because I remember having lots of files in my documents, but now there's only electronic arts, so this might've just gotten rid of everything else unrelated to the sims there as well. I looked into my OneDrive, but there were no files there. Then I tried disabling OneDrive by going to its settings, but came out OneDrive's syncing was already off on my documents folder. I also tried searching the slots in the My PC folder, but nothing came up... Now I don't know what to do. I lost all my saves, all my CC, and possibly other stuff that was previously in my documents folder. I'm also doing a computer scan with ESET right now, but so far nothing has come up.

I had the same issue. I got into the game and all my saves and CC was gone. Also, the Desert Delux kit (that I got for free) is no longer showing up in-game. The problem might just be even bigger, because I remember having lots of files in my documents, but now there's only electronic arts, so this might've just gotten rid of everything else unrelated to the sims there as well. I looked into my OneDrive, but there were no files there. Then I tried disabling OneDrive by going to its settings, but came out OneDrive's syncing was already off on my documents folder. I also tried searching the slots in the My PC folder, but nothing came up... Now I don't know what to do. I lost all my saves, all my CC, and possibly other stuff that was previously in my documents folder. I'm also doing a computer scan with ESET right now, but so far nothing has come up.

@Lo_TheBlackWolf  Just checking, but are you signed into the same Windows account as you were using before?  It would be odd not to have noticed switching accounts, but that would also explain how your content disappeared.

Other than that, I don't know what to tell you.  You're not the first person whose user data has disappeared for no apparent reason, and while some cases can be explained by a virus and a few others by a failed OneDrive sync (it can't upload the files properly but still removes them from the computer), that doesn't account for everyone.  And even if I could tell you why this happened, your data is still gone, unfortunately.

I know it doesn't help right now, but this is why it's critical to make backups of your files, so this never happens again.

I appreciate you answer. As for the Windows account, I was logged in to the right one when I opened the game, however, I was not logged into my OneDrive, which would probably explain why my files weren't there. It did say, when I wanted to log in, to \"log in to start syncing again\" which I assume meant that it wasn't syncing my files at all before that.

I'm aware that I might never get these files back, but it's fine as long as I get the Desert Delux kit back into my game (which luckily it still says I own it on steam). Sometimes it's good have a new start, but from this day on I will definitely have a copy of all my sims files just in case this happens again.