More Awesome Than You!

I have heard all the horror stories about moving occupied lots to different neighborhoods, so I have never tried it. However, I want to delete my tester 'hood and start over--I did something wrong in the process of trying to keep townies from generating. My problem is I have now played my test family enough that I'm rather fond of them, and would like to save them before deleting the neighborhood. Is there a safe way to do that? Search just shows lots of threads on how NOT to do it...

Also, is it safe to delete the Maxis pre-made families from the bin? I am never going to play most of them, and certainly not clones in every location.

On pre-mades...no, don't just delete from the bin. Do the process under Deleted 2. They still like to insinuate their little bits here and there. Get empty templates from Peasantry before creating a new 'hood and you won't have to deal with them.

On your playables...you really don't want to move those sims as-is. The best thing to do is use SimPE to clone the sims. Follow directions here (http://www.modthesims2.com/article.php?t=72235).  Then recreate the family in the new 'hood. You can reset their stats and relationships in SimPE. You'll lose the memories, not that memories mean anything for sims.

I second what Zazazu said.  Cloning is the best bet for keeping them.  It is worth emphasizing that after cloning them with SimPE, you should re-create/re-clone them in Bodyshop, rather than playing the direct SimPE clones.  SimPE clones often do not work well right out of the gate.  Recloning in Bodyshop and then deleting the SimPE clone will ensure you have a fully playable sim with no extraneous garbage attached.  Then you can open the sim in CAS and adjust personality.

If you are talking about one family (dad, mum, and kids) you can put them all together in one CAS session and it will even take care of rebuilding their family relationships again (i.e. setting them up as married, related, etc.).

An INTP should know better than to even try.

Don't do it!  It's not worth the pain!  Let them go...

I never bother with the relationship preservation crap, or the personality thing.  If I like the genetics/look/whatever of a sim, I clone him/her and pop them in the savedsims folder.  Then when I build a new hood, I have my new raft of custom townies (saves time).  I get to see my sims behaving in odd new ways (sloppy romance sim from one hood becomes the exemplary family sim with 5 kids in the next hood).

I hate all the note taking on the personality stuff.

Well, personally, I have an addiction to starting new 'hoods, and having old sims running around makes me feel guilty about all the other pixels lying ignored in the old 'hood. It also takes me a good two months to delete an abandoned 'hood, at minimum. I finally purged Urban Paradise a week ago, and I'd stopped playing it when Seasons came out.

I have the same habit of frequently starting new 'hoods and getting pretty involved in them for a while, but just can't bring myself to delete my old ones, especially since I added my second hard drive and no longer need to worry about space for my 'hoods.

Every now and then I'll get the urge to go and play a particular sim or family ... and then remember that I deleted that 'hood 2 years ago.

(http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/5946/17479747jr0.jpg)
Seeing an arrow button here fills me with an uncontrollable rage.  >:(