Ok, first of all, I would like to say it is a bit difficult for me to search for a similar post- the search system is a bit complicated for me. So, I am sorry if this has already been answered, I could not find it - at least I didn't find an easy way to search

So, anyway to the problem. I had created a custom world which I have played for a while now and has been working smoothly and great. I played it, saved games, and was happy with it. But after a while I decided to make another one based on this original one, but with fewer lots and some changed things. So, what I did was:
opened CAW and loaded the original world (let's call it worldA)
I changed all I wanted and saved As (lets say WorldB)
In the saved as, I changed name,description AND picture of the layer.
So now I had a file , named WorldB, with name description and picture of its own, And the original WorldA, unchanged from all I know right?
I selected world to export-WorldB and it was successful.
I installed it on my game and what happenned was,
It was installed allright, I run the game and I came to see that my saved games were un-loadable because "an expansion pack -or something else- had been removed so it can't load" . I quit and look through the files of my sims folder and see that
1.in the installed worlds the WorldA.world file has been replaced with WorldB.world file and
2.in the worldCaches file the worlsA files are there -no worldB of course because I didn't even attempt to load the worldB,I was too upset...

What could have happened and can I fix this in any way other than to re-install the game ?
If any files are needed, please advise me which are helpful- the CAW ones or the exported ones, I didn't know which to load

Thank you in advance

Others is more into the technical bits than me, but I made a few worlds. It isn't really the description that identifies the world file, it's the hex numbers. That's something very obvious when you upload it to the sims3 gallery. It will tell you the worlds has already been uploaded. You have to remove the hex numbers.

If you can save your save I don't know, someone else might.

Volvenom thank you for the quick reply, however I don't understand how this should be an issue , as I have the original .world file not from the sims3 game file, but in my CAW folders, as I made it. If I understand well, you're suggesting that I should open it with S3PE and follow the precedure with editing premade worlds? I will certainly try it, but I don't understand why it should be like this scince my work was entirely done on CAW with only the pre-export files. Still, I will try it and hope it works. If this is not what you meant by hex numbers -as I have only seen numbers when using S3PE that's what I thought of- please explain if you don't mind

Thank you again!

When I tested my world I made in caw I changed those numbers quite often when I wanted the game to read it as a new world. I changed it with S3PE as you suggests. I don't know what other world makers do, perhaps they never really go into the old file never again, and doesn't need the old file. i don't know.

Well, finally what worked was, I uninstalled both the original and amended worlds from the Launcher, and then I re-installed the first one and then deleted the files in S3PE for the amended world and installed it as well. Now both worlds work and I didn't lose my saves. What probably happened was, because I didn't delete the files the first time, it installed over the original world. But the system recognised it as already installed. So, re-installing the files , even if amended correctly, the system would only recognise one and keep over-writing it and seeing it as already installed. Turns out I should have uninstalled from the Launcher and then re-install them both as new. But my saves were saved yay!

In the end, thanks for the suggestion, it did help me realising what I should do.

Ok. I know another way is to put them in the library. It's not recommended, but what is might only be relevant to noobs.

I would probably still use the hex option though, but interesting angle.

...oh your saves?! Geeez I'm soooo off .... I need more chocolate.