To save in The Sims 2, click the Options button (the “…” in the bottom-left corner of the lot view) and choose Save, or press Ctrl + S while playing a lot. The game also asks whether to save whenever you leave a lot for the neighborhood, and that prompt is the only thing resembling an autosave the game has. This guide covers the two save methods, what saves and what does not, where The Sims 2 Legacy Collection keeps its files (the folder moved compared with the original game), Steam Cloud, and how to back up a neighborhood before mods or a patch.
Saving from a lot
There are two ways to save while playing a household, and they do the same thing:
- The Options button. Click the “…” button at the bottom-left of the screen and choose Save. The lot, its Sims and the household’s relationships with the rest of the neighborhood are written to disk and you carry on playing. Save and Quit does the same, then exits the lot.
- Ctrl + S. The keyboard shortcut for the same save. It works on residential and owned lots while you are in live, Build or Buy mode.
A save writes the whole household’s state, including Sims who are away at work or on a community lot with you, so you do not need everyone home. What you cannot do is save on a vacation community lot with Bon Voyage or from the neighborhood view: neighborhood-level edits are saved as you make them.
One habit worth building now: save before the Headmaster visit, before a birthday, before using a genie lamp and before any cheat. The Sims 2 has no undo, and a reload is the only fix for a wish gone wrong or a Sim aged badly. Our guide on how to reset a Sim in The Sims 2 covers the stuck-Sim cases where a reset beats a reload.
The prompt when you leave a lot
The Sims 2 does not autosave on a timer. What it does is ask. When you leave a lot for the neighborhood, either through the Options button or by quitting, a dialog asks whether to save the changes. Choosing not to save discards everything since the last save, which is a feature many players use deliberately (a bad chance card, a fire, a death), and it works cleanly in the current build: the Legacy Collection’s February 27, 2025 patch notes fixed a bug where quitting without saving after a child’s birthday did not fully revert the age-up, so that trick is safe again as long as the game is updated.
If you want a periodic save prompt, that is a mod job. Community autosave mods exist that pop a save dialog every set number of Sim hours; our guide on how to install mods in The Sims 2 covers where they go in the Legacy Collection.
Where the Legacy Collection keeps saves
This is the part that changed. The original game and the Ultimate Collection saved to Documents, EA Games, The Sims 2. The Legacy Collection, released in January 2025 for Steam and the EA App, uses a new folder: EA’s support article describes it as a folder named The Sims 2 Legacy inside your Documents folder, and says that is why old saves need to be copied across rather than being picked up automatically. Inside it, Neighborhoods holds every neighborhood as a coded subfolder (N001, E001 and so on), Downloads holds mods and custom content, and SavedSims holds Sims exported from Create a Sim.
Player reports differ on the parent folder name. EA’s article says Electronic Arts, while many Steam players report finding it under EA Games. If you do not see it in one, check the other, and remember that Windows 11 often redirects Documents into OneDrive, so the folder may be inside OneDrive, Documents rather than the local one. The folder is only created after you have loaded the game and saved at least once.
Old saves from any earlier version work in the Legacy Collection, per EA, as long as they are not corrupted. EA’s instructions are to move the current The Sims 2 Legacy folder somewhere safe, rename your old save folder to The Sims 2 Legacy, and put it in the same place.
Steam Cloud and backups
The Steam store page lists Steam Cloud for The Sims 2 Legacy Collection, so on Steam your save folder syncs between machines when cloud sync is enabled in the game’s Properties. The EA App version has no equivalent listed, so EA App players should treat manual backups as the only copy.
To back up by hand, close the game, then copy the whole The Sims 2 Legacy folder (or at minimum Neighborhoods, Downloads and SavedSims) somewhere else. Do it before installing mods, before a patch, and every so often regardless, because Sims 2 neighborhoods corrupt in ways the game cannot repair: the Legacy patch notes themselves warn that saves damaged by since-fixed bugs (vanishing Sims, Sims unable to eat) stay damaged and need a fresh start. A backup from last week is the only way to avoid that.
The 2025 version of this guide linked a reset guide that did not exist yet and named the old save path. Both are fixed above, and the Sims guides hub has the rest of the cluster.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is the save button in The Sims 2? Click the “…” Options button in the bottom-left of the lot view and choose Save, or press Ctrl + S.
Does The Sims 2 autosave? No. It prompts you to save when you leave a lot, and that is all. Periodic autosave prompts only come from mods.
Where are Sims 2 Legacy Collection saves stored? In a folder named The Sims 2 Legacy inside your Documents folder (under Electronic Arts per EA’s support page, or EA Games per many player reports). The Neighborhoods subfolder holds your saved games.
Does the Legacy Collection use Steam Cloud? The Steam version does, per the store page. The EA App version has no cloud sync listed, so back up manually.
Will my old Sims 2 saves work in the Legacy Collection? Yes, per EA, as long as they are not corrupted. Copy the old folder into the new save location under the new folder name.