Over the summer I did a bunch of world edits for a friend of mine, they went on and played happily but last week their one drive synced after not using it in awhile and has absolutely wrecked their game folder, there are empty save folders, missing mods, a whole other slew of problems but the most important to them is that any of the saves made with this new edited world are not able to be opened. It says "Cannot load this save game. it may have been saved with expansion pack data that is no longer present on this system." Steam says all packs are enabled, so this isn't the right issue.

We had to do tests on a few world copies so I'm not sure if this is that a different version of the world is installed, or there is something else missing that they used and that's blocking opening it.
Is there any way to see maybe the world code somewhere so I can compare it against the different version I have? I still have the final version of the world I edited for them installed, but I can't open it either.

If not, Is there ANY way to see what the missing dependency is or any way through any mods or side programs that I can extract the families or lots from the save file and at least give them that? Like via a porter file or something?

Thank you for your time!

Did you check your OneDrive for these files? They can be stored there.
Do you have backups of these files on the same or other device outside OneDrive?

They cobbled together some of it, but not all .

That's really bad! 😞 But if the most important files are there that is great!

If you can't revert them and if didn't make a backup, you can try to restore the system to the date before this update or could try to use a file recovery program (as a last event, didn't recommend).

If you don't actually use OneDrive, it's better to disable it, because Microsoft loves to make people's life miserable who are not prepared .

OneDrive is absolutely obnoxious, it should be off by default.

When I first installed Win 10/11 the first thing I make is to uninstall all the bloatware and disable features I'm not going to use (life is easier without them). Also using local account is better choice for people who don't use these apps on daily basis and want more privacy.

Unfortunately the original PC was formatted, I'm unsure if it was to fix this or if the sync was in preparation for it, but system restore is not an option and was one of the first things I suggested. I encouraged her to uninstall it but it's apparently mid sync and not currently allowing it. Hopefully safe mode will fix it but I do not have access to the PC.

What do you mean by local account? 110% agree on ditching as much bloatware as possible!

It's likely that the files themselves are intact, but the game is experiencing a known issue with OneDrive accessing those files while the game is running.

I'd recommend advising your friend to make backups of their important files, such as into a new folder on their desktop, and then following the instructions on the official bug report: https://forums.ea.com/discussions/t...ng-save/8322938

In short local accounts are a thing in Windows 10/11 which is a user profile stored only on computer, not linked to Microsoft account. That allows you to sign in offline and you have better privacy, but with a local account you can't directly syncs settings and files across linked devices. Setting a local account on Win 10 was way easier than on Win 11.

All my computers at home have a local account, so I don't have much knowledge about OneDrive flaws!

Best thing to do is what CardinalSims suggested in the previous post.

@LemonyLin

Did your friend recovered their save files?

So far, no. Our current theory is it's missing something from a store world. I'm at the end of my finals week and she has been working so our plan is to try and tackle it this weekend.