Hello to all the Simmers out there!
I found out about something and thought that perhaps other people might be interested in knowing it as well, so I'm sharing it here. (I hope this is the right place.)
It's about how Lots are displayed in the game. Everyone who has ever obtained Lots from the Store has probably already noticed that they display an Exchange icon, even though they are Store content. The only exception to that rule is "Graham's Pet Swap Shop" which actually displays a Store icon (as can be seen in the first image).

So I digged through its file to find out why it's the only one that displays the Store icon and found it out. This tutorial will tell you how you can do it yourself for any Lot or even Household. All you need is the S3PE Package Editor.


1. Go into the Library folder where all of your created and installed Lot/Household files are. (It is inside the The Sims 3 folder which is inside your Documents folder.) Its contents should look something like the image below.
[If you don't have a Library folder or if it's empty, then you don't have any Lot/Household files you can edit. Either create or install Lots/Households first. Lots/Households that came with the Base Game or Expansion Packs cannot be edited or I at least don't know where the files are, but even if you knew, you probably shouldn't edit them.]


2. Pick out the file of the Lot/Household which you want to display a Store icon. (All Lots/Households inside the game are sorted by the Date they've been last modified. So if you've just created or installed one new Lot/Household, then it will be the one with the newest 'Modified Date'. Alternatively, you can open the files in S3PE and see if there is anything that might hint you towards which Lot/Household it is about.)
[Some advice: You can rename the Lot/Household files to anything you like, the game will still load them (as long as you don't remove the .package at the end of the file!)]


3. Open that file with s3pe. (After opening s3pe, click on "File", then "Open". Then sort through your folders to the above-mentioned Library folder and choose the Lot/Household file you want to open.)

After opening the file, it should look something like this for example:


4. Make sure that at the very bottom of the S3PE window, there is a tick at "Sort" and a tick at "Tags".


5. At the top of the S3PE window, you will see headlines like "Tag", "Type", and so on. Click on the headline "Filesize". This will sort the entire list by size. (If it is sorted from largest to smallest, then click onto the headline "Filesize" once more so that it will sort it from smallest to largest.)


6. Look at the very first entry of the list. If its Tag is "UNKN" and its Filesize is "0x00000002", then you have found the resource you need to edit. If so, skip to step 7. If not, see step 6.5.


6.5 If the smallest file is bigger than that or not even an UNKN resource, then it's probably a self-created Lot/Household. In that case, you will need to import the missing resource from another Lot/Household file which has been installed instead of created by yourself. Open that file with s3pe. Then do the same steps as above until you find the correct resource. Then right click on it, pick "Export", then pick "To package...". Then find the file you wish to have this resource in and choose it.

It will ask you if you want to reject or replace duplicates. Since the resource is not inside the file you try to export it to, it does not matter at all which option you choose, but if you really want to be safe, just choose "Reject".

Afterwards, re-follow all the steps until step 6, then continue with step 7.

7. Double click the first entry. A new small window will open up. At the top, there are three bars titled "Type", "Group", and "Instance". Click onto the bar next to "Group". Inside, there will be a value, most likely "0x02000000", but maybe something else. Whatever it is, change it to "0x01000000". Then click on "OK" at the bottom right of the window.


8. Now make sure to save the changes.
IMPORTANT NOTE: If you do this, the file will have a new 'Modified Date'. This of course means that the Lot/Household will now be shown as the very first entry inside the game. If that bothers you, find a tutorial online how to manually change the 'Modified Date' of a file to anything you wish.
If you wish to proceed, click on the top left on "File", then pick "Save". (Or pick "Save As..." if you want to save it as a new file, but make sure to move that file into the above-mentioned Library folder so that the game can load it.)



Done! When you enter the game, the Lot/Household should now display a Store icon.


You can do it to the Festival Lots of the Store worlds which need to be downloaded separately from the Exchange, for example:


And as I said, you can even do it with Households: