Sim moved out and is now missing

[V]

I had a crowded household of two "married" couples and 2 sets of twins: Peter & Harriet and Peter's twin sister Margaret & her husband Beau (Broke). Peter & Margaret were so close and spent so much time together that Harriet & Beau were left to entertain themselves and fell in love... but not before they each had twins with their respective "spouses". To avoid too much more of a mess I had Harriet and Beau and her twins "find own place". When I saved and closed the lot Beau and one of Harriet's babies was in the Sim Bin, but Harriet and the other twin were missing. So I went back into the lot and she was there. So I had her choose "find own place" again and move out with her one remaining baby. Everything seemed to go normally, but when I saved and closed the lot she was still not in the Sim Bin.

This happened before the new SimPE came out so I closed the neighborhood and didn't go back. When SimPE came out I went looking for Harriet & her baby and they are listed as townies. Actually Harriet is listed four times as an adult townie in the Default household and one time as being an adult townie in the Wimsey household. Her baby is listed once as a baby townie in the Wimsey household.

When I returned to that neighborhood to have Beau try to call her she is not listed as someone he can call. But he does remember having public woohoos with her and being rejected for going steady by her.

I am very confused and have no idea what I should do to fix this problem. I don't even know what it was that I did to make this happen. It seemed like a perfectly normal move-out to me.

[miros]

First, back up everything!

I'd at least get the baby into the household with Beau with SimPE... I'd also assume the Harriett in the Wimsey household is the "real" one.  Use JMP's instructions to delete the other ones (assuming they all have different IDs) and move Harriett in with Beau too. 

If Beau can't call Harriett, I'd try the crystal ball.

I had a pet go missing during a moveout.  He's still in everyone's relationships, he's just not on either lot or in the Sim Bin, nor is there an urn for him (elderly poodle that someone bought autononomously).  I'll have to see if I can get him hooked back up to his owners...

[J. M. Pescado]

I think your neighborhood is a BFBVFS. If you have *4* copies of a sim, you've been doing a Very Bad Thing, like lotbinning them.

[V]

If lotbinning is moving the family and their house to the bin and then putting them back into the same neighborhood later, then I have not been doing that. But I do package lots with families and use them again in new neighborhoods. But I don't put double characters into the same neighborhood.

Harriet was created in CAS and moved into a Strangetown home and packaged within her first few sim days. Peter & Margaret were created as children with parents. They were moved into a house in Pleasantview and that lot was packaged within a few sim minutes of landing. I later packaged up a new version of Brandi's family for use because Beau turned out so well and was compatible with Margaret. I took all three of these packages (plus several others) and installed them with the game closed from my PackagedLots folder. Then I opened the game, made a new "Experimental" town, and pulled my favorite characters from around the game and put them in that town. Since everyone seemed to be doing fine and I didn't have any problems for many sim years and at least two EPs, I renamed the town and stopped considering it as an experiment.

So... is that not an acceptable way of re-using characters and homes?

[J. M. Pescado]

Brandi cannot be packaged, she knows other sims in Pleasantview. Moving that family without moving the entireity of Pleasantview quickly results in BFBVFS.

Consider your neighborhood a writeoff, and never do that again, unless you think you're up to the task of exhaustive hours of technical cleaning.

[V]

What kind of exhaustive technical cleaning?

[J. M. Pescado]

Hand-deletion of all duplicate pfiles, relinking of duplicates to their correct versions, etc. It's doable, but not easy, and if you're getting weird errors, your neighborhood is probably already corrupted in unknown ways. Such a task is likely beyond the capabilities of mere Vtuggles.

[V]

Unless it is a highly repetitive task, it probably is beyond my current capabilities. Is there a tutorial or some such that you know of that could get me through the first several steps? I have had some little success with SimPE on a small scale such as following along with the DNA fixes and repairing mysterious family relation problems and so forth. I realize this would be bigger and more complicated than that, but if my neighborhood is ruined anyway it couldn't hurt to use it for learning purposes.

[J. M. Pescado]

Unless it is a highly repetitive task, it probably is beyond my current capabilities. Is there a tutorial or some such that you know of that could get me through the first several steps?

The only tutorial that might help is Deleted 2. Everything else, you just kinda have to wing it on a case by case basis.