I was wondering if it's safe to package a dorm that used to house dormies and playable sims. I remodeled a dorm in one hood and want to make it available for the rest of the hoods in my game. I noticed that after I moved all the playable sims out of a dorm, all the changes I made to the lot (even decoration changes in dorm rooms) were still in tact. But, I also noticed pictures of dormies/playables were still on the doors like they were still living there. I just want to make sure packaging the dorm and installing it in another hood will not bork my game in any way. Any insights on how to do this safely? Thanks for the help!

That's a good question and I don't have the answer for it.

Best thing to do is to sell every thing in the house and then make a small change and save and exit to hood view then pack it up. Place it in a throw-away hood/Uni and fix it up how you want it then you should be able to just put it in the bin to have it for any other Uni hoods.

It's not clear whether there's significant information left in a used building. Some months ago (or even last year?) Mootilda discovered character tags clinging to items in lived-in spaces, which makes sense when you consider how the fingerprint machine works; but she was never able to get to the bottom of the problem of whether these tags were likely to cause problems. This is why MTS doesn't want tested copies of buildings - just in case. You're supposed to package the building, playtest a copy, and upload the unplayed original.

The damage, if any (and Mootilda died before she could rule out the possibility), is not as big as for packaging an occupied house; too small for Mootilda to locate with the tools she had. So if it were me, I'd be willing to risk it for personal use. The claims on the doors are a big, obvious character tag, though, so I personally wouldn't do it while they were there.

To get rid of them, move a student in briefly, then move her right out again, before any doors are claimed. That should unclaim all the doors, and after that it's up to you to decide how worried you are about any lingering tags.

I like what Peni Griffin said. Or, to be safe, remove the doors, save, then add new doors and repackage,

Also, I have a question: do the character tags show up in Clean Installer?

No but you'll see them in SimPE I should think.

It shouldn't be a problem because once new dormies move in they can then claim those rooms too and they replace the older pictures with theirs.

Is it possible you handed out dorm keys to other sims and they still have those? That might explain why the doors still are claimed while the person already moved out.

just take a screenshots and build a new dorm

A mod I have suggests something may not be right or safe in a dorm that hasn't been played. This mod deletes broken and other controllers, tokens and fixes sims state every time any residential or community lot is loaded. Not sure what it all means but I sent 8 play-ables to the 9 room dorm in the Fiesta campus. I paused right away so they could click and claim a room before dormies showed up. Once I un-paused the game, 21 controllers were removed. I have no idea what they were for but I've never seen more than 2 on any lot. There were also a bunch of tokens removed, but my sims didn't need any fixes. This was the first time playing this hood so whatever was fixed was previously there. The 2nd time I loaded this lot, it only removed 4 controllers and there wasn't anything to fix. EDIT: Forgot to mention, this mod is by Boiling Oil at Simbology. I don't know the name.

After awhile, I got a pop-up saying the Uni wanted to move in a dormie and which gender did I prefer (this is a mod). Considering I couldn't move a 9th play-able in, I deleted the door before that dormie could claim it. I wasn't interested in a sim that might possible commit suicide by stupidity.

It sounds like No Sim Loaded.

I sometimes wonder if the Maxis houses/dorms were played before shipping. They don't seem to have known that that's a VBT.