Empty packages:What is the most efficeint way to weed out unwanted symbols and unwanted characters from downloads folders?

[Island Girl]

Is it necessary to also edit the descriptions of downloads for unwanted characters to prevent the empty packages from showing up? What is the best way to edit downloads exactly? Can I edit descriptions using S2PCI somehow? I have made 3 run throughs of downloads and still get empty packages. I have renamed my file and followed all information I have found on the forum except I have not edited descriptions.
Do quotation marks need to be deleted? How about brackets and slashmarks or asterisks? Your help will be very much appreciated. Thank yous.

[J. M. Pescado]

The easiest way to avoid unwanted packages is simply to delete any package with a name that consists of a long string of meaningless characters with no intelligible info. It's realy that simple. It's an add-on download. If you don't know why you added it there, it doesn't belong there.

[Island Girl]

Thank you for your reply but it doesn't really answer my questions.

[Alisar]

Island Girl, any special characters (?'^*§° etc) can give problems - delete them from the package name :)
you'd better use only - and _ in addition to alphanumerical characters

[Island Girl]

Thanks so much for your reply. I have gone into my downloads folder and renamed every one that had those characters but they still show up in clean installer. I can't figure out how to edit the descriptions of the individual files. I read that those special characters in the descriptions can cause problems also. I have over 7,000 files and have gone through 4 times now. Thanks again for your help. All suggestions are much appreciated.

[Black0rchid]

Descriptions and titles are not the problem. Problem is only with the name of the file.
Rename only the files .package, all that have unwanted symbols and characters in your download folder/s.
Then, enter the game and export again your lot.
Now your lot would be ok.

Renaming package file is a big work: use the Search tool, and search &, ?,^,§,°, (it's impossible to search ' and *..do it manually)
search all german-polish-spanish characters, like č,ë,ö,õ,ü : it's important.
For example taroo (tarox4sims2) has many and many files named with ö and ü character
Also Alex Stanton (http://linna.modthesims2.com/member.php?u=191013) names his objects (beautiful objects!!) with strange charachters. These are the two creators I remember

[Island Girl]

Black Orchid, Thanks very,very much for you reply. I have gone through all my files and fixed any names but the lot still shows the evil empty packages and error messages with clean installer. The lot just doesn't work without the custom content so I think I am trapped in limbo trying to fix it. Your suggestions are so appreciated. Thanks!

[SahrMohtahn]

The easiest way to avoid unwanted packages is simply to delete any package with a name that consists of a long string of meaningless characters with no intelligible info. It's realy that simple. It's an add-on download. If you don't know why you added it there, it doesn't belong there.

I thought the intelligible names came from using sims2pack files. I often get those and because I cannot obtain a copy of clean installer anymore, have been manually choosing to install sims2packs with Qxpress. After extracting the packs with the sim's 2 program version, it also always leaves a few unreadable lettered packages from the pack I unpacked [whether i use q express or sims2 to unpack the s2pack]. I assume this means that those are important files from the sim for example, that I just extracted from the pack. Is this the case?

Note, I verified this because I would let it extract to my sims downloads folder but made sure that all other files were closed in folders so that I would not confuse the new unpacked files. In my downloads folder was the stack of jumbled letters like this:

5cc4fb413d472f5661db05c626bb01a8.package
9cda0484322bb8d0e754e083affd5db6.package

Thank you for any info :bunny: .