1) Open the neighbourhood in SimPE. In the Tools menu select Neighborhood and then Sims Surgery.


2-3) In the Sims Surgery window find the Sim you want to export in the Sim Pool on the left hand side of the window. With the Sim you want selected, click on Use (2) and then on Export (3). Choose a filename that you will recognise for the exported Sim -- typically their name.


4) Close SimPE and open Body Shop. Click on Build Sims and then Build or Clone Sims


5-6) Find the Sim you have just exported. Select them by clicking on them (5). Then clone them by clicking on the Clone Selected Sim icon (2 Sim figures and a tick) (6). Body Shop will save the clone Sim with a randomised filename.


7) Close Body Shop and open your SavedSims folder in File Explorer (aka Windows Explorer). (I find the shortcut Windows Key + E the easiest way to open File Explorer.) Sort the folder by Date Modified, and I recommend setting the view to Details. Both of these can be easily set in the View tab in the Ribbon.


The cloned Sim file you have just made will be the newest file in the SavedSims folder, with the meaningless randomised file name that Body Shop gave it. Rename it to something meaningful. Typically this will be the name of the Sim, but in this case I was adding a "ve-" prefix to the filename, to indicate that these are Veronaville Sims. I was also adding the year to the end of the filename. This is because I may export and clone the same Sim more than once over their lifetime. Even in my snail's paced game Sims can change significantly over time. I exported l a lot of Sims back in 2014, when I (wrongly) thought there was serious corruption in Veronaville. Back then Brigitte Moltke was a child; now she's a teen.


At this time you can safely delete the original file that you extracted in SimPE. It contains data that the game can't use. It used to be thought that this data could corrupt the neighbourhood that the Sim was being placed in. It now seems more likely that the game just doesn't use this data. However it still takes up disk space, and I see no point in clogging up your disk with data that the game can't use, so I always delete the original extracted Sim once I've made the clone. Note the cloned Sim file will be smaller than the extracted one, as it contains less data.

8) All that remains now is to package the new Sim. To do this restart Body Shop. This time click on Build Sims and then Package Sims.


9-10) Typically the Sim you've just cloned will be first picture you come to (but I wouldn't like go guarantee it.) Wherever the Sim is, select them (9) and then click on the Package Sim to File icon (a Sim being put into a box) (10).


11) That opens this dialogue box.


You enter the filename in the top box. Underneath there's a box to enter a description. I dutifully fill it in every time, but i never see the description afterwards, neither in Clean Installer nor in the Windows file properties dialogue. When you click on the Tick button, Body Shop will save the packaged Sim to your desktop as a .Sims2Pack file. The desktop is about the last place I want it, but it's easy enough to use Cut and Paste to move it to somewhere more sensible.


This tutorial was first shared in my thread Finding a way that some of my Sims might outlive me. I am more than willing to hear what you think of this tutorial, including any corrections and suggestions for improvements. I suspect that most TS2 Simmers will be quite familiar with Body Shop, but may not be so familiar with File Explorer/Windows Explorer. Because of my background in computing, I have been using the latter and its predecessors (going right back to the MS-DOS command line) almost every day for the last 30+ years. (I still think I'm a computing newbie compared to people who were working in computing in the 1960s and earlier.) Please let me know if you think it needs further explanation.