You can copy families from a back-up or neighborhood to the import function in The Sims. This means that the family won't be in the neighborhood where you want it to be until after you've imported it in the neighborhood using The Sims. Usually The Sims will ask you if you want to import any families at start up, so you can actually make the copy then. Otherwise, you can use the import button in the toolbar to import the family. More details about that are in the manual or installation guide of The Sims, which come with the game. You cannot copy a family to a back-up. You must restore the back-up (Chapter 6) first (restore to a non-existing neighborhood to prevent any loss of data!), then import the family to that neighborhood, and finally refresh the back-up (Chapter 14). You can then delete the temporary neighborhood (Chapter 8) again.
All The Neighborhood Handler can do is copy the family to the import function. You can copy from a back-up, but not to a back-up as explained above. Choose the "Copy a Family" option on the main screen (Chapter 3) to load up this screen:
It's all pretty easy here. At the top part, select the back-up or neighborhood to copy the family from. You will see the details of the neighborhood in the box. At the bottom, you see the families that can be copied from there. If the family you want to copy is not in the list, then first load it in The Sims and save it. The "Export html files" option in The Sims must be turned on too. The family you last selected (you can select multiple families) will be previewed. At the right top of the window you will see the preview of the house. If you select a family member, then you will see their name, picture and bio there. Regardless of the family members you select, the whole family will be copied anyway (including their home), you cannot select specific family members to be copied.
Click "Continue" to copy the family/families to the import function in The Sims. As described above, you must then import the family to the neighborhood using The Sims' import function. Click "Abort" to go back to the main screen directly. Note that the copying of the files may take a very short time, and you may see no more than just a flash when it's copying the files.
Related chapters: