WTF, Creation Kit?

[Guest NeonFirefly]

FYI, I'm brand new to the Creation Kit, so if the answer I'm looking for is glaringly obvious, don't laugh at me too hard.

 

I'm in a pickle. I want to know how to continue editing an existing .esp in the CK. Simple question, no? Well here's my problem: Say I'm working on a new NPC, right? I'm saving whenever I make a new edit, 'cause the damn thing can't seem to go five minutes without crashing for no reason. So sure enough, it crashes. No biggie, after all I've been saving pretty consistently. So I reopen the CK, load the data for the .esp I've been working on, then I make another edit and try to save. But nooooo, says the Creation Kit, you can't save over an .esp that you're currently working on! Alright then, say I, I'll just make a new .esp to save it to. So that's what I do. Then I load that one up only to find that my alternate save doesn't have any of the edits I made BEFORE saving to a new .esp!

 

In other words, I've got one .esp with only the first half of my edits, and another .esp with only my last edits. What am I missing here? I feel like the only possible solution is to do the entire mod in one go without exiting, but considering the CK's propensity for randomly crashing, that's virtually impossible!

 

Am I making any sense here? I feel like this should be an incredibly stupid question, but for the life of me, I cannot figure out what the solution is.

[b3lisario]

http://www.creationkit.com/Data_file#Active_Files

[Guest NeonFirefly]

Thank you!

 

Geez, I've got a lot to learn...

[MisterMane]

We all start somewhere :-)

[conkec1993]

uh,by the way,how do you creat hairmod with CK ? 
I already got all the part (.nif and .dds file ) but dont know how to putting it together : (