Your Sims are bald or naked, furniture is missing, your CC is gone — often right after an update. Don't save. Quit the game without saving: as long as you haven't saved, your save on disk still has everything. Only then, the steps in order, from the cheapest to the costliest — nothing here deletes anything.
What you see on screen is your Sims as the game sees them right now: without the content it didn't find when loading. Your save on disk hasn't changed: it still holds the hairstyles, the clothes and the furniture. If you save now, the game rewrites the save without them — and putting the file back won't put them back on your Sims. Quit through the menu and choose "Quit without saving". Then, as in the guide, copy your Mods folder somewhere else before touching it.
Already saved — or an autosave mod did it for you? The game keeps earlier versions of each save on its own: on the "Load Game" screen, the recovery icon next to your save offers an older one. Go back to the one from before the problem, then carry on with the steps.
This is a common way everything breaks at once, and a quick one to fix: the game disables mods with every patch. Without them, it loads your save without a single piece of CC — hairstyles, clothes and furniture vanish together, on every Sim and every lot. That's what sets this case apart: everything disappeared at the same time. In game: Options → Other → tick "Enable Custom Content and Mods" and "Script Mods Allowed". Then quit the game completely and reopen it, without saving: the change only takes effect on restart.
It looks too simple to be the cause — and yet it's a step often skipped, even by experienced helpers, who then recommend a full reinstall.
Two cases where the game says nothing. OneDrive or iCloud may have kept the contents online and left only an empty stub on disk: the file looks like it's there, the game can't read it. A telltale sign: the game calls a file "corrupt", and it's a different one every time. Don't delete anything: Windows/OneDrive → right-click Mods → "Always keep on this device". Mac/iCloud → right-click → "Download now", then turn off "Optimise Mac Storage". And content downloaded yesterday that doesn't show up may still be inside its archive: a .zip or .rar left as is never gets read, you have to extract it — the guide, step 2, says where the game looks.
Here, no unticked box and no missing file: the file is there and the game reads it, since you can see the hair in Create a Sim. It's in Live Mode that the game no longer draws it. This happens when an update changes how the game dresses or draws its Sims — a patch once added a new layer system to CAS, and content that worked the day before stopped showing up. There is nothing to fix on your side: the content itself needs updating, and only the person who made it can do that. Check whether a version released after the patch exists on their page; if not, the community list (step 5) says what's broken and what's already been fixed.
Meanwhile, a bald Sim in Live Mode breaks nothing: your save runs. Only give them a new hairstyle in CAS if you are willing to lose this one on them — otherwise keep it and wait for the update.
Comes back on its own: everything that was missing because the game hadn't loaded it — unticked mods, a stub left by the cloud, a file moved out during a 50/50 test. As soon as the file is read again, your Sims get their hair back and your furniture its place. On one condition: not having saved in the meantime.
Doesn't come back on its own: whatever was saved without it. The game rewrote your Sims without the hair, and the lot without the objects it couldn't find. The files themselves aren't lost: it's the save that forgot them. Put the hair back on in CAS, place the furniture again from the catalogue — or go back to an earlier version of the save (step 0). And content a patch really broke only comes back once its creator has updated it.
Paid content — a pack, a kit — that has gone missing isn't a mod problem: that's for EA support, and this page can't help with it.
After every update, volunteers keep by hand, on the EA forum ("Mods & Custom Content" section), the list of broken mods and CC — and of those already updated. It's the go-to list: search for "Broken/Updated Mods" followed by the patch number. Before deciding a piece of content is dead, check whether it's listed as updated. This page copies nothing from it and never will: those are years of volunteer testing — we point to it, we don't copy it.
Your problem isn't here — the game crashes, won't launch, freezes? The full guide covers everything in order, from the cheapest step to the costliest, without deleting a single mod.
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