Sims 4: repair changes language; missing text strings

@Sylmos  I see both a Recorded Videos and a Screenshots folder in your screenshot.  Are your new screenshots and videos in those folders, or are they going into the folders in the red box, or neither?

You can delete any file or folder inside this Sims 4 folder, and the game will regenerate it as necessary.  You'd lose the contents of the files or folders, at least as far as the game itself is concerned, but screenshots and videos don't need to be stored inside the user folder in order for you to view them.

@Sylmos  I'm glad it's fixed.  The EA App doesn't handle language-related questions well right now.  In addition to lacking the option to switch languages, the App sometimes installs in the language of the App itself instead of the player's chosen language, which can be even more of a problem when the App doesn't even support certain languages that Sims 4 does.

As for the user folder, all but four of the game's languages place user files in "The Sims 4," even if the folder might logically be called something else in that language.  (Exceptions are Spanish, French, German, and Dutch.)  Some subfolders have the same names too, while other folder names are localized, and all these subfolders end up in the same Sims 4 folder, as you can see in your screenshot.

Hello, all of a sudden the EA App decided to start Sims 4 in German (I live in Germany, but have only ever played Sims 4 in English - until today it worked just fine on the app). In addition to this, all my saves are gone, it's like a vanilla version of the game. I still have my original "The Sims 4" folder in my documents folder but the app now refuses to use it - instead it created a brand new "Die Sims 4" folder which obviously has none of my stuff. How do I change this back? I've already renamed the wrong German folder and tried changing the language on the app. Neither helped and apparently you can't even change the language anymore (unlike Origin, why were we forced to switch if nothing works?). Please help, thank you!

@ImpalaMuse  When you play in German, the game will read and write user files to "Die Sims 4," as you're seeing now.  This is hard-coded into the game.  If you want your content back and are fine playing in German, you can delete the current "Die Sims 4" folder and rename "The Sims 4" to "Die Sims 4" so the game reads it.

If you want to switch back to English, you'll need to uninstall and reinstall Sims 4; we haven't found a way to switch languages on the fly yet, and the EA App doesn't support it.  In that case, you of course don't need to rename any folders.  Please make sure the EA App itself is running in English when you install Sims 4—one common reason for the wrong language to be installed is that the App is running in a different language than the one selected for a game.

Thank you, I was trying to avoid a reinstall but it worked in the end.

After the update on 3/24/2023 (PC: 1.96.397.1020), almost all items from The Sims 4 Growing Together have **DEBUG** descriptions. Only The Mini Camper Sleeping Bag has a description. I cannot use some gameplay objects in the game, such as treehouse and splash pads. I have all expansion packs, game packs, stuff packs and kits. This issue only affects The Growing Together Expansion Pack. I uninstalled and installed the EA app. How can I fix it?

Other features from The Growing Together Expansion Pack are also affected. No description is visible for old milestones, but they are visible for undiscovered ones.

I can't play - no text on pop-ups.

@Sylmos and @Hikari38  I've merged your posts with the master thread for this issue.  Please see the first post on page one for suggestions.

The posts have been split into their own thread now.  The other thread containing the relevant suggestions is this one:

https://answers.ea.com/t5/Game-and-Mod-CC-Issues/CURRENT-ISSUE-Codes-instead-of-text-Blank-text-and-bubbles/td-p/3903165