So recently when I back up my families the next time I load my game whatever CC ( skin/objects/hairs/clothes ) is in that lot or sim removes itself from my game like downloads folder, So the next thing I do is " restoring the neighbourhood " using the option in the Supercollection to clean up my neighbourhoods and re place the family. But im wondering why is this happening really frustrating losing their friendships etc.

You need to set Sims 2 folder in My Doc to both read and write or it will delete items after a restart of either the game of your computer.

Windows 8 comes this way and a update for Windows 7 changed it to this way.

Wait how can I do that a bit confused sorry im on a Mac

Wow Mac doing it to now. I only know about Windows so some one else will need to come around for Mac.

So your saying that every time you put in CC in the downloads folder and then restarting your game or computer you no longer have the cc in your downloads folder.

Maybe these will help you: How to Set File Permissions in Mac OS http://www.macinstruct.com/node/415
Troubleshooting permissions issues in Mac OS https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT2963

Just to check -- I know this is really obvious... You did enable cc in your game, right? You don't get the screen at the beginning saying "Whoa, wait, you have all this custom stuff! It can change the game! Are you suuuuure you wanna do this?" And the cc you want to use is Mac compatible? (Quite a bit of what's out there is not.)

Also, how are you backing up your game?

Yeah I have tons of CC and I get the box and my cc is enabled / mac compatible, my problem is that whenever I package a lot my family what ever CC is in that lot/family gets removed from my downloads folder and replace's it with other CC that I have or Basegame Items for the objects.

When you say "package a lot," do you mean that you are packaging an occupied lot to a file? That is a Very Bad Thing and will result in corruption, which might account for the problems you're seeing. Also, I'm not sure that Macs have the ability to properly package cc with lots.

Can you please describe your backup process in more detail?

Oh really, well thats what I have been doing since I really have no other way that I know of sadly, Well whenever this happens I just usually just " restore neighbourhood " using the launcher and that pretty much cleans the hood from the start and re place my family.

Do you know any other way you think I can backup my families?

If you have been packaging up your lot with a family in it then placing that lot in a new hood you are corrupting that new hood each and ever time you do it. There is no safe way to package up a family on a lot with out corruption.

You being on a Mac you have really no option other than saving a copy of the hood your family is in. Then each time you want to start over just put a copy of the hood back in.

You're not going over the Mac limit on cc are you? I know there is a hard limit to how much cc you can have and anything over that will make something disappear.

mien kampf, yeah i'm pretty sure im not going over the limit is there a tutorial for saving the hood?

Making backups? Easy! Copy the Neighbourhood folder from Documents (or whatever Mac replaces that folder with), paste it to a safe place outside your game folder. Preferably a CD/DVD/USB-stick/External harddrive. It's basically copy/pasta, and I'm pretty sure you've done that before, so no need for a tutorial.

However, if the hood is already borked, the best thing you can do is to restart your game from scratch, as any copies of the borked hood will start out borked.

And how to do that, and at the same time keep the old neighborhoods as a backup for extracting sims and such? Easy. Cut & paste the neighborhood folder to a safe place (see above), and then run the game. The game won't see the neighbourhood files, and will regenerate them from the install files. You won't need to reinstall or anything such.

As for CC disappearing - The default installer should only save a copy of the CC items with the houses, so why they're disappearing is actually a very good question. Either it's the Mac limit, or you've put the files too deep inside folders (more than 3 layers of folders can be bad, particularly with long file or folder names). Could also be that your somewhat clumsy packaging (and reinstalling?) of lots is causing renamed files to overwrite the originals. The default installer is well known for its renaming problem, something the Clean Installer somewhat managed to fix (unfortunately it doesn't work for Macs). Maybe Macs are just alot more sensitive to identical files with different filenames than Windows is.

Okay, thanks for everyones help!

For the bright blue CC, it looks like you have deleted their meshes so that's why they look like that.

MileyTheSimmer, I thought that at first but they seem to still be in my sims download folder?

OP, I think we have the same problem, I am also on a mac and I never had a problem until I packaged an (unoccupied) lot. I only download objects and build items, no skins or hair, and they were all working previous to packaging a lot. Now they have either been replaced with Maxis originals or are that terrible blue.

When you restore the neighbourhood do you lose all the lots you built? What exactly happens after? I want to try restoring the neighbourhood but I don't really understand what it does. I'm not worried about any sims as I only really build houses/lots, but what happens to the CC that worked before any lot packaging, but disappeared or were replaced when you were experiencing problems?

TIA!! I hope we find a solution

The bright blue ones might well be meshes from a set in which most of the items are slaved for their texture to a master mesh object.

Yes, I agree; they are. Some but not all of the CC in my game is missing. What is missing includes a window that is the master to much of my CC, including everything that is blue.

Thanks for all the swift replies!

UPDATE: The solution for me has been to move all CC that was in the lot I packaged from my Macbooks standard download folder (takes some searching) back to TS2 download folder. Once I have finished that I will need to refurnish the lot. JOY.