How does the game recognize a character? (half-solved)

[jinc]

So...here's the deal. A neighborhood of mine had a problem with a carpool and blahblahblah, but none of the others did. I still don't know what caused it, but regardless, I deleted that neighborhood after I saved my sims' data files (ex. N004_User00000.package ETC). Now I have new, nice neighborhood, no bugs in existance (yet).
What I want to know, is how to get those data files to be recognized by the system. I changed them to the correct neighbor name (moved from 05 to 04) and have been playing in SimPE so that they actually exist. With lifestages, aspirations, and whatnot. I don't know what I actually need to change to get the game to recognize them. So, before I screw up again, I'd like to ask the advice of the knowledgable people here.

Also, I had actually packaged all these sims up in their houses before deletion, but while the houses + furniture came in fine to the new neighborhood, the people did not. Is that normal?

Thanks for any and all help!

[jaxad0127]

Thats not normal. If you have their character files, it is possible to re-add them.

[jinc]

How do I add them back exactly? Just put them in the Characters folder? Because I already did that. If it's something else, I don't know it.
Basically, I want to know how to put my families into the "select family to move in" section/area OR their original houses. They aren't showing up and I don't know why.
After a bit of digging through code, I'm pretty sure the characters are counted as townies, but aren't in the townie households. I have one more test to run and change a setting. If it doesn't work, I'm outta ideas. Still, thanks.

[jaxad0127]

Its more than that. You have to link sim descriptions in the neighborhood package to the character files or they're not loaded.

[jinc]

I may or may not have done what you said. I don't really understand what it is I'm supposed to do.
However, I did find an odd work around way by switching the "lot instances" lines in the sims' files with some temp sims I made. I'm not sure that makes sense. Either way, all my families are back in the neighbor. They all want to join the army career track and their aspirations plummeted as a side effect though?
Now I have another problem though. My neighborhood screen turned completely blue. I'm going to look through the FAQs for something like that. And restart the game to see if it fixes itself.
Thanks for your help, Jaxad! Sorry for the troubles.

EDIT:
1. By blue screen, I mean the cyan game background one with no text.
2. Restarting the computer + game didn't do anything.
3. The three default neighborhoods are fine.
4. I think I broke SimPE. It shows default info in the browser (ex. Sim Description instead of the specific character's name), though the data itself shows up fine when you click on it. You just don't know what it is...This applies for all neighborhoods.