More Awesome Than You!

I have Uni and NL installed. I took a sim to a downtown lot in the family car. All went perfectly, she had her dream date, it ended and she was heading home. The house came up, but the sim did not, and the buy and build options remained disabled. The rest of the family was fully playable. (Her roomie went to work and even brought home her townie boyfriend.) The missing sim was still gone.
Forcing errors brought the sim home, but without the car, and buy-build remain grayed out. Any suggestions on what I should try next?

Exit without saving.  Or if you've already saved, reload and see what happens.  If that doesn't work, move them to another lot.

Try "Reenable UI" on the Lot debugger.

"Reenable UI" doesn't show up as an option on my version of the Lot Debugger (we are both talking about that invaluable yellow place-holder box of yours, aren't we? Or is there something else?)

That's the one. It's highly recommended you get the latest version(s) of your hack(s), as sometimes known bugs are squished and/or new functions are added.

You may need to first enable the dorm build cheat to get access to the buy catalog if you need to place it. This should enable the buy UI in all cases (but not the options/save menu).

Also try clearing stuck moveouts. If this all fails, force errors on *all* using the lot debugger.

Using the "Force Errors" command is what brought my sim home ("Retrieve Missing Sim" didn't do it). That was good enough...things can be replaced far easier than characters. I moved them out and back in again, and all is well (other than being a bit poorer, but I approve of that! They had too much money anyway.)

Thanks, all.