How to install mods from a pre-profile version of NMM?

[burnsflipper]

Hi everyone,

 

I used to play Skyrim a few years ago and used NMM to manage all of my mods. I stopped playing around the time NMM switched to using profiles. I remember loading up NMM one day after an update and it had some options to switch to using profiles, but my mod setup worked in-game and it had taken me countless hours to get that all set up, so I never migrated to use the profiles feature in case something went wrong and lost my setup.

 

I now want to start playing again. I've installed Vortex and it has an option to import from NMM, and even though I have the correct folder chosen, it finds 0/0 mods. If I open NMM, all my mods are on the "Plugins" tab, and the "Mods" tab is empty. My game does load with all my mods working, and I can see some of them deselected in the Plugins tab of NMM which don't get loaded in-game. If I open the folder that Skyrim is installed in, in my Steam library path, I can see all the esp and bsa files in the Data folder, which I guess was the old way of doing it.

 

I should note that when I open NMM, it doesn't prompt me to migrate to using Profiles, it just loads the main window up and displays my Plugins as "Profile 1" (and I distinctly remember a modal dialog box appearing after the update, prompting me to update to using profiles). If I could get it to prompt me to migrate to using profiles, that might be a very useful first step, but I don't have the installer for NMM any more so I can't uninstall/reinstall to force it to re-prompt me.

 

How do I get all my currently-installed mods into and managed by Vortex? Any help appreciated.

 

Technical details:

- Vortex 1.0.5

- NMM 0.65b (installed and working just fine)

- Windows 10

- Skyrim (original version)

- about 70 active mods, 10 inactive (and some mod creators have since made the mods unavailable, so I can't download them from the Steam workshop or Nexus)

Edited November 7, 2019 by burnsflipper

[HadToRegister]

If it took you hours to get your current mods setup, "set up", I would advise against importing, because NMM has a tendency to corrupt the files and info Vortex needs to import, and it causes a mess, then Vortex gets blamed.

Instead, click on the DOWNLOAD VORTEX button (or is it INSTALL VORTEX), scroll down to the bottom of the page, and click on Community Release (GitHub) for the most up to date version of NMM that will work with the Nexus.

If you ever decide to use Vortex, start with an unmodded, clean game so you can get used to Vortex and the new way of Mod Sorting etc.
Much better than jumping in right in the middle of everything by importing a semi-large load order

[burnsflipper]

Hi HadToRegister, thanks for the advice. Not what I wanted to hear but is brilliantly sensible, so I'll do that, thanks. I'd love to use Vortex but not at the price of corrupting or losing my existing working setup.

[burnsflipper]

I downloaded and installed one of my existing "Plugins" into the mods tab of NMM to see what would happen. It now appears in there (and the esp file is still in the Plugins tab). When I load my game, it has all my old mods and the new version of this mod. I guess this puts the files in the same place but registers it properly with the extra info in the Mods tab? If I go through my list of installed mods and download/install them all again into NMM and keep check everything is still working every so often, I can them import into Vortex?

 

Can I have Vortex and NMM co-existing? I'm just wondering if I should just take that same list of installed mods and install them straight into Vortex?

 

My comment of "took ages to get everything working", now that I've had a play around with it again, was to do with getting ENB Series and ENB/Lighting mods working properly together, but I have that figured out now.

 

My main concern is losing the configurations/progress of my installed mods - like if I have a mod follower who has a quest line that I've completed, and maybe I've given them particular weapons and armour, that they don't lose this if I reinstall - but that config is saved in my game save file, not any of the mod files?

[Zanderat]

Correct. As long you don't create a save with the mod removed and then reinstall, simply updating a mod won't affect your save.