Need Help, saves not usable.

[BarakIII]

Hey. I'm at a loss right now. I went to load one of my older character saves and it wasn't there. I don't know what happened to all my old saves but I can no longer use them. My game only seems to be reading the most recent saves that I've used in recent months. I went into MyGames/Skyrim/Saves to check if my saves were there. They were there but I noticed only my  most recent saves have both .skse and .ess files. The older saves are only .skse and a lot of my older saves are  listed as .ess.tmp files. I don't know why this is the case. I have no idea why .ess files would be missing nor why others are .tmp files. I'm very upset because some of these are characters I've been playing off and on for many years. Is there any way I can salvage these saves? I'm so confused. I don't know how this could even happen.

Edit: I'm pretty sure whatever happened happened in the last week or so as I'm certain I saw them all there in the game recently. Could the recent windows update for windows 10 have done this? Damn, it looks like it did the same to my fallout 4 saves as well. I am soooo pissed right now. 

Edit 2: I don't know if it's relevant but there's a file called steam_autocloud.vdf in the save folders as well that are dated 1/12/24. Could steam be the cause?

Edit 3: It does look like this was caused by Steam. The saves seem to be scattered in the steam user files. Now I have to gather them all back together and make sure they all still work. f*#@ing steam man! Bah.

Edited January 15 by BarakIII

[7531Leonidas]

Sounds like you have allowed Steam to synchronize your game.  Don't use this unless you also game on other machines.  I think that if you eliminated the .tmp after your older saves, they might well work.  Try one out.  I have the autocloud.vdf file in my save folder too, and do not have synchronization active.  When you right-click on your game title in the Library, go to Properties, and make sure that the option to keep your saves in the Steam Cloud is ticked off.  There is also a setting for Steam Cloud Synchronization in the Settings for Steam itself, I do not know what happens if I turn it off altogether, not willing to try right now.

[BarakIII]

I don't know if I had that set on or off. I know it's not something I've messed with either way for a long time so if it was off it got turned on automatically, perhaps by a steam update or something I don't know. Like I've said I've been playing for many years and never had this issue. Shortly after I posted this I found several posts of others who had this issue recently. I would recommend anyone who uses steam to check their saves for Skyrim LE and Fallout 4. I don't use Skyrim SE or AE so I have no information on that. If it turns out you have missing saves they are likely in steam user files which is usually at the very bottom of the list of folders. You'll have to go thru those files in order to find them. Under each numbered folder look for another folder named 'ac'. So the path would be Program Files/steam/userdata/numbered folder/numbered folder/ac/WinMyDocuments/MyGames/Skyrim/Saves.

Edited January 16 by BarakIII