Long story short, I was fooling around in the editor with a small mod I was working on and accidentally flagged some random container type as modified. I remember there being a program for Morrowind that would let you take unwanted references out of an ESP. Does something like that exist for Oblivion? I've searched but I honestly have no idea what to search for.

You can use TESCS for that kind of edit. I am confused about what you are trying to achieve. It kind of sounds like you want to look into http://sites.google.com/site/oblivionpoinfo/tunesetup/tes4view-edit...

Yes, TES4Edit is very simple to use for things like this. Open your mod in TES4Edit, find the erroneous edit, right-click and select "Remove". In TES4Edit, "remove" means to remove the edit, not to delete it from the game (unless the edit is a new record in your mod, of course). Answer yes, save and close.

Every modder should regularly open and clean his/hers mod this way, as the CS tends to add wild edits without your knowledge.

Well, let's say, hypothetically, I was making a mod and in the process opened up and accidentally changed a container that's used heavily in the game (like a clothing cupboard) and now, even if I set everything back to default, that cupboard is still flagged as having been modified in some way by the .esp I'm making. Therefore, it'll overwrite any other mods that edits those cupboards if my mod is loaded later than the other mod. I'm looking for a way to clean that up (and any other unwanted changes).


Thank you though, I'll look into TES4View/Edit.

Probably cross-posted, but using TES4Edit's "Remove" will completely remove any trace of the edit from your mod.

TES4Edit is an amazing tool and lately I've been spending as much time with it as with the CS proper, but for this kind of cleaning I find TESsnip to be even faster. They've both got a home on my desktop.

same here

Yeah, sorry about that! The forum lagged out for a couple minutes when I tried to post, so I didn't see your reply until it had already gone through.

What you describe is the most common mistake modders do - editing vanilla containers instead of creating unique new ones. It's a good thing you caught it before releasing the mod.
With TES4EDIT it's very easy to clone a vanilla container (or other record). Just use the "Copy as new record into" your mod and then do the needed modification.

It's actually very simple to do in the CS as well. Double click on it and do any editing you want. Just make sure to change the Editor ID before clicking OK. The CS then asks you if you want to create a new object (since the Editor ID is changed), to which you of course answer "Yes".

You don't need a third party utility to fix a mistake like that. Just before you load the mod, open up details, find and click on the reference you don't want to have changed, then press Delete. An "I" will appear, meaing Ignore, which tells the editor to not load that particular item. Then after the mod is loaded just save again and the changed reference will be back to vanilla settings. That's actually the best way of deleting objects as well, since using Delete from within the editor still leaves a reference in the mod which can dirty things up after awhile. Using Ignore will completely remove it though.

Eh? That won't do squat for a vanilla record being deleted, and if you're deleting something you added that has a formID belonging to the mod, deleting it is entirely clean. No stray bits get left behind from that. Using the ignore function would work for deleting your own references too but it's a hassle to even use that feature.

That's the best use for using Ignore. You don't delete the actual vanilla record, you just tell the game to disregard it. The record still exists inside the Oblivion.esm file. By using Ignore, you're removing all trace of your change to the vanilla entry and allowing it to come through from the default esm again.



I've seen plenty of references in the details list of records that have a D beside their name, meaning they had been deleted in the CS but some trace of them still remained in the esp. Using Ignore will eliminate them completely. After fighting with the delete function several times in mods I've worked with, and still having those entries appear in the CS, I stopped using it altogether and simply set them to Ignore when I load the mod. It's a bit more work yes, but it's 100% guarenteed to get rid of something you don't want. Using Delete isn't. Most of the time yes, but not always.

Personally I always feel "safer" with TES4EDIT. With the CS I don't feel like I'm totaly in control and when I do use it (dialogue and editing scripts) I always have to check with TES4EDIT afterwards.