Vortex has old .ESPs in the Plugins tab, but I removed the mods...

[PikachuLollipop]

I removed some of my mods, but the .ESPs still show up in the plugins tab. I even tried reinstalling one of the mods and removing it again, but it's still there. Pic attached for reference:

 

[SkunkMonkey]

Did you hit Deploy after uninstalling the mods?

[Khumak]

You will also run into that if you do something like edit those plugins in SSEEDIT. If you do that, your edited plugin goes in the real data directory, not your mod folder. For things like override patches that I edit frequently I just leave them in the real data directory unless I'm going to completely redo them, in which case I go and manually delete them from the data folder. If you're only going to tweak them once then just move them into your mod folder, zip it back up, and reinstall it with your edited plugin included in the zip and it won't do that.

[Grestorn]

Khumark,

 

Vortex automatically detects if you changed an .esp and will ask you if you want to "apply" the changes permanently or if you want to "undo" them.

 

If you use 'apply', your changes will become a permanent part of the mod installation, i.e. even if you disable the mod and later reenable it, your changes will still be there. Only "reinstalling" will unpack the original archive and thereby destroy your manual changes.