Sync Sims 4 saves across multiple computers?

Move the Sims folder to One Drive/ Google Drive/ Dropbox?

https://lifehacker.com/how-to-sync-your-saved-pc-games-between-computers-with-1501078690

Unfortunately The Sims 4 does not feature cloud saving. This means that any progress made on one computer is not carried over to another computer, even when you are logged into your Steam or Origin account.

A solid way around this is to set it up so that your Sims save location is linked to your Dropbox or OneDrive.

• Ensure The Sims 4 is closed and then within File Explorer, navigate to C:\Users\<your_user>\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 4

• Copy the entire 'The Sims 4' folder to your desired location within OneDrive or Dropbox (you should have the program for either of these installed)

• In the start menu, type 'cmd' and click 'Run as administrator' link

• Type the following: mklink /d "[path to cloud service folder]" "[path to your documents folder]"

e.g. mklink /d "C:\Users\Oast\OneDrive\Electronic Arts\The Sims 4\saves" "C:\Users\Oast\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 4\saves"

What this does is creates a symbolic link between your local Sims saves folder and your cloud storage saves folder, so any changes to your save file is also made to your cloud folder. If you do this on both computers then you will always have both of them linked.

It is worth noting that you will need to ensure you have adequate space in your cloud storage (the file size should however be negligible) and that your files are synchronised before playing.

all my Sims data resides on an external SSD drive and has done so for months. I haven't lost a single save or any of my (expansive) collection of CC. I don't know why one shouldn't do this, especially since both Origin and the EA Desktop app explicitly offer to save to folders other than the standard C: drive. Anecdotal evidence from the forums to the contrary, I am in the process of setting up an online save location, but just for my saves and just as backup when I move play remotely on my MBP laptop rather than my Windows tower PC rig. If I do encounter any of these ghostly effects (vanished CC and saves lost to the ether) I'll report back to apologize.

@severinwanderer  I think most of the warnings are for people that either don't understand how cloud saving works or allow a built-in service (OneDrive, iCloud) to auto-sync their data on its default settings.  Quite a lot of people lose their data that way, or at least can't find it until someone shows them where to look.

Origin and the EA App don't support storing user data, including saves, in a custom location.  There settings are for games' install locations.  Sims 4 will always look for user data in Documents > Electronic Arts, and the only ways around that are to move the location of Documents or to use a symbolic link to point to another location.  Syncing is different: the game will still use the default location, but the files will be backed up elsewhere and in some cases automatically shared between computers.

You say to copy the entire 'The Sims 4' folder into OneDrive, but then in your path, it looks like you have copied the entire 'Electronic Arts' folder. Did you mix up, or am I misunderstanding something? Anyway, I tried both with copying my 'Electronic Arts' folder into OneDrive, and only my 'The Sims 4' folder, and I got the error message "Cannot create a file when that file already exists". When I tried without copying into OneDrive first, this error message showed: "The system cannot find the path specified".

I must have mis-typed something, but I'm not sure what. Here is my input:

C:\windows\System32>mklink /d "C:\Users\ninah\OneDrive - Universitetet i Oslo\Electronic Arts\The Sims 4\saves" "C:\Users\ninah\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 4\saves"

Please let me know if you notice what might be wrong, thanks!

@ninevaha  The "file already exists" error means exactly what it says: there's already a folder with the name "saves" in the location where you're telling Windows to place the symbolic link.  An operating system can't allow for two files or folders with exactly the same name in the same location.

The "cannot find the file path" means that the folder where the symbolic link is supposed to go doesn't exist in the location you've typed.  This makes sense because before you copied the Electronic Arts folder into OneDrive, that entire set of nested folders wasn't present, so Windows couldn't find the location you were telling it to access.

From your description, I believe all you need to do is remove the saves folder from OneDrive.  I can't be sure, but just try it and see how it goes.