Tl:dr: yes, you can completely switch without reinstalling anything.
MMM gets a list of the installed mods from the source instance/profile and creates a mod order from the conflict rules that are set in Vortex. You can either choose to migrate the mods with hard links (mirror) or to copy (clone) the mods. The difference is that hardlinks take no additional disk space and refer to the original file. Means: is the original file modified, the "migrated" is modified, too. In both methods (hardlink and copy) you can safely delete the source mods after a successful migration. Beside the mods and their order, separate file conflicts are handled (.mohidden in MO2 and file overrides in Vortex), ini files get copied either from the source instance or the game folder under Documents to the destination instance and the LOOT userlist gets copied from/to the installed LOOT under AppData\Local\LOOT from/to the integrated LOOT of Vortex. In addition to that, the plugins loadorder.txt and the plugins.txt get also copied. Not all mods that can be installed in Vortex can be installed in MO2 (for eg. SKSE or Engine Fixes Part 2). Those mods are detected by MMM and it asks you before the migration what to do with them. You can either ignore them or you can choose to copy them to the game's installation folder. I already migrated several large collections like Constellations (> 1200 mods) from Vortex to MO2 and encountered no issues.
I am trying to get Path of the Prophet working on steam deck, but have had no luck getting vortex to work in game mode. So, I've spent the last 2 days trying to install the collection with mo2. It's been a nightmare, lol. I'd love to use this tool, however vortex and mo2 are in separate prefixes. Any advice on how to proceed? Would it be possible to do the migration on pc, then simply copy the migrated mo2 directory from my pc to my deck? 🤞 🤞 🤞 🤞
It would be possible when converting the MO2 instance to a portable instance. MMM currently doesn't support that but I'm working on it for MMM v3. Follow these steps to convert a global MO2 instance to a portable one that you can freely move:
Migrate the Vortex profile with MMM to MO2. Choose a path like C:\Modding\<your desired instance name>\ for the destination, so that the mods folder would end up at C:\Modding\<your desired instance name>\mods, profiles at C:\Modding\<your desired instance name>\profiles, etc.
Download and extract the latest ModOrganizer release from here.
Extract the content of the .7z file to the folder that you chose earlier, so that for eg. the ModOrganizer.exe would end up at C:\Modding\<your desired instance name>\ModOrganizer.exe
Go to %LocalAppData%\ModOrganizer\<your desired instance name> and move the ModOrganizer.ini file from there to your instance folder so that it would end up for example at C:\Modding\<your desired instance name>\ModOrganizer.ini
Open the ModOrganizer.ini with a text editor and remove the lines starting with "base_directory", "download_directory", "mod_directory", "profiles_directory" and "overwrite_directory".
It is recommended to delete the %LocalAppData%\ModOrganizer folder (make a backup of the folder if you still have other global instances), as it causes issues with portable instances.
Running the ModOrganizer.exe from your instance folder, eg. C:\Modding\<your desired instance name>\ModOrganizer.exe, should open your migrated portable instance.
After verifying that the migrated instance still works, you should be able to just move it to your Steam Deck.
Thank you for such a speedy reply! I'll give it a go tonight. If all goes well, I'll be plastering your mod across reddit and steam. A huge chunk of the steam deck community has been struggling with this issue.
So trying to migrate to a portable instance broke one of the plugins. However, I was able to successfully transfer a global instance to the mo2 install I already had on my steam deck. But a new issue arose. OAR was not loading any of my animations. I finally found a fix though, and that was to download vcredist directly to my game directory and change it's name to Enderal Launcher.exe and execute it from steam. Apparently there is an issue with the deck failing to install Microsoft dependancies on the first run. This installed it directly to my prefix, then after changing the names back, everything worked like a dream!
And there's the issue. I forgot to check the drives of each path. The issue is the "Hardlink mode": Hardlinks don't work across different drives. If you want to migrate to a different drive, you have to select the "Copy mode". As I already wrote, I forgot to add a check for each of the paths.
This IS likely ignorance on my part, but I did search and found nothing...
Moving Fallout 4 FROM G.O.G. to Steam, while also moving FROM Vortex to MO2, I'm basically losing all saves and mods?
Edit: Nevermind, the mods "moved" fine (which is weird since they should be for the wrong FO4 version), but the saves are illusive. It seems MO2 is running the GOG version, not the new Steam version. Leaving this post for now until the question can be better phrased.
Edit 2 (2025/2/21): That was a terrible idea, going from GOG (1.10.163) to Steam (1.10.984) requires a new game and a new mod list.
Make sure that MMM has full write access to the destination folder. If it still fails, please create a post in #support on the Discord server linked in the sticky post.
I'll see what I can do. I originally planned to work on Starfield support as soon as, both, MO2 and Vortex have full support for it. But I'm currently occupied by other projects.
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You can find the log file under "%AppData%/Mod Manager Migrator/logs".
MMM gets a list of the installed mods from the source instance/profile and creates a mod order from the conflict rules that are set in Vortex. You can either choose to migrate the mods with hard links (mirror) or to copy (clone) the mods. The difference is that hardlinks take no additional disk space and refer to the original file. Means: is the original file modified, the "migrated" is modified, too. In both methods (hardlink and copy) you can safely delete the source mods after a successful migration. Beside the mods and their order, separate file conflicts are handled (.mohidden in MO2 and file overrides in Vortex), ini files get copied either from the source instance or the game folder under Documents to the destination instance and the LOOT userlist gets copied from/to the installed LOOT under AppData\Local\LOOT from/to the integrated LOOT of Vortex. In addition to that, the plugins loadorder.txt and the plugins.txt get also copied.
Not all mods that can be installed in Vortex can be installed in MO2 (for eg. SKSE or Engine Fixes Part 2). Those mods are detected by MMM and it asks you before the migration what to do with them. You can either ignore them or you can choose to copy them to the game's installation folder. I already migrated several large collections like Constellations (> 1200 mods) from Vortex to MO2 and encountered no issues.
Edit: For more information regarding hard links read this Wikipedia page.
After verifying that the migrated instance still works, you should be able to just move it to your Steam Deck.
A error occured WinError 17
Purge the game directory how to do that
Moving Fallout 4 FROM G.O.G. to Steam, while also moving FROM Vortex to MO2, I'm basically losing all saves and mods?Edit: Nevermind, the mods "moved" fine (which is weird since they should be for the wrong FO4 version), but the saves are illusive. It seems MO2 is running the GOG version, not the new Steam version. Leaving this post for now until the question can be better phrased.
Edit 2 (2025/2/21): That was a terrible idea, going from GOG (1.10.163) to Steam (1.10.984) requires a new game and a new mod list.