Need help restoring my Sims

[TheCelt]

I have decided to start fresh.  I uninstalled everything and reinstalled the games.  Now I am having a problem getting my handful of Sims and the houses that I wanted to keep to show up.  I can get them to show up but then I have no NPCs.  I wanted to keep my own custom Sims and have fresh NPCs and townies and such.  And the houses I have downloaded will show up in the city, but they are no longer in my lot bin.  


Or some times in my efforts to restore my stuff  my game simply never loads.  I have all the the packs, including Bon Voyage and Teen Stuff.

So I need help.  Lots and lots of help.  

I wish I still had the bodyshop templates of the Sims I wanted to keep.  But some of mine that I wanted to keep were born in the game.  

Is there a way to change a Sim's file (like with Simpe or some other program) so that they would appear in Bodyshop?

Thanks in advance for any help or advice!

[miros1]

This depends on how you "saved" the Sims and houses.

If you packaged them with the Lot Packager, you simply reinstall them and they should be in Occupied Lot portion of the Lot Bin.

If you deleted the lots and Sims that you didn't want from the neighborhood, then zipped up the whole 'hood... that's a little harder.  When you put them back in and they show up in the neighborhood, at the neighborhood screen, select each lot and click the Package icon.  Save them to file.  Quit and remove the entire neighborhood folder.  Install each packaged house.  When you start up the game again, the 3 base neighborhoods will regenerate, and your houses and custom Sims should be in the Occupied lot bin.

If you can't get that to work, yes, you can make templates from any Sim in the game using the SimSurgery plugin for SimPE.