Unfortunately, it is no longer true to say I don't have any problems. One of my Subhoods crashes now any time I try to load it, through the neighborhood screen or by any other means. Whether or not this is related to the number of characters, I can't say. After all SimPE is completely useless with BV right now. Can't even get into it.

So I've done what I can to start a new neighborhood in which I will try to control the population better. However, I'm even limited in setting that up, since I have to resurrect Bella to get Pleasantview as I want it. The other three were easy once my friend typed up very detailed instructions on how he took care of it the first time. With the process he used, it didn't create any extra characters like are created if you package a house with outside ties. Something to do with putting all the connected sims (by relation or friendship) on the same lot, and as for those with graves at their houses: putting those in their inventories to be put back on the lot later. Using that method, his own game is garbage file free. No extra characters. Mine probably had more to do with what I didn't know early on. I made mistakes, and learned from them. However, I didn't learn fast enough it seems.

Thanks for the advice anyway. I guess this time around I'll just have to be much more cautious. I swear, I don't see how it is they released a game with so many problems and don't even acknowledge them unless they came with a recent expansion, such as the tour guide and charlatan multiplication issue.

Hmm...I'll give that a try. I really feel that it is worth the effort to save because it would take just as much effort to start them over from scratch again. Getting all the default neighborhoods isn't that big of a problem, but remaking every family and putting this family back through life would probably take just as long.

I didn't think they could be safely moved as-is. At least I know how to put them back into CAS if things don't work out.

I've heard about a lot of problems being caused by having too many characters in the neighborhood. I've been playing with a carefully merged neighborhood that consists of Pleasantview, Strangetown, and Veronaville attached as Downtowns to a main Neighborhood. This was done by a friend who learned the way to do this without causing problems. He also did the same with the Seasons Neighborhood. I'm not as good at all that as he is.

I've spent a lot of time making up a neighborhood with plenty of people to interact with. Needless to say, I've spent a lot of time making up this neighborhood so that, with each family I play, it is a different experience. Plus the sims friends have made to add to it.

Now, I looked into my Characters folder to see what sort of numbers I'm at, and the number is well over 3000. From everything I've read, that is quite bad. So I went into SimPE, and see duplicates of some sims, some that have no connections to people (At least if the identification SimPE gave them is right). I'm afraid that something bad is going to happen to this neighborhood if I don't get it cleaned up, but I don't know how to go about that. I'm especially afraid of losing one family that I've worked a lot on. They currently have 4 grown kids, one being an alien (I couldn't believe it) and 3 graduated college. All married, with their own kids, careers, etc. If I could package them up safely for use later without losing memories, pictures (large photo album), etc. I wouldn't be so worried. But I know they'll lose their friendships, among other things. Which would in turn screw up their memories of those people and pets they have met. They are the one family I couldn't stand to lose all the work from. The others I'd do whatever it took to wipe out their memories as far as outside contact to safely move them, but this family is much more difficult to deal with should a problem arise because they have been the most active.

Getting to my point, what can I do to either clean up the character files or safely move the important families? At this rate, recreating using a safe process doesn't sound so bad, especially since I was late to finding out about the Tour Guide/Unsavory Charlatan thing. I just want to be able to keep going without worrying that the game might really screw up to the point of losing it all, and I have the time to use whatever process necessary to clean it up or recreate.