Change clothes & body shape together?

Def newbie here...

Is there an easy way to change body shape & clothes all in one?

After a week or so in SL I fancied a change, but somehow I overwrote my hard-worked on original face, even though I changed the file name.

I've tried "save", "save as...", and "save all", they all seemed to overwrite clothes facial features, hair etc, though I can now save different body shapes.

Can anyone give me foolproof instructions, for a fool is wot I is.

Thanks in advance.

Hi Kendo, right click yourself and choose appearance---make outfit----check all that you want to go into the folder-----and name it. All you need to do is drag the folder onto yourself when you want that look. Good luck!

Hello Kendo, don't worry we all did it to start with!
You may find some of your supposedly lost shapes etc loitering in other folders. I for one still don't really grasp the difference between save and save all!

Thanks both. I'll try again.

I think what I did was "save as..." and typed a new name, but then I had another tweak, and on closing the appearance window I accepted the offer to "save changes", thinking I was now the new character and wanted the minor changes. I reckon that is when my old character face and clothes were overwritten.

Ah well, back in the saddle....

kendo, If you want to save each 'tweak' of your appearance separate from the previous, you'll have to go through the whole 'make outfit' hullaballo: create a new folder/appearance name, making sure you tick all the active boxes and options, etc. Afterwards look the clothing folder in your inventory and you'll find the newly-created folder.

Once you've got your collection of appearances set up, you only need to drag the relevant folder onto your av and your appearance will change accordingly. Once caveat: if any of the clothes or attachments you wear happen to be no-copy they'll get moved to the newly-created appearance folder.

Thanks Alazarin, I think you hit the nail on the head.

My mistake was I thought I could save different versions of the same character, by changing appearance and saving the new settings under a different name.

Instead it seems that 1 version of a character must not share body, clothes, hair etc with another, as it those items will be changed. In other words, each bodyfile/hair file etc can only have one setting.

I think I got it now....

Thanks again

Kendo

Update 29 Nov: (a tip for other noobs like me) The folder drop change works fine. However if you intend to change avatar by picking up one of the many free ones about, make sure the new folder has ALL the bits your avatar needs. Many free ones have bits missing -eg eyes/skin- and after the "change" your av will still be using any missing bits from your old av character. If you then go to "appearance" to say, change the eyes/skin colour to match the new look, you are also changing the eyes/skin you had in the first place and will lose the original settings. Hope this makes sense!

yes, forgot to mention 'make outfit'. you can have the same named shape/skin (basic linden) in each outfit but each one will have it's own settings.