SIMS Extract tool won't launch

After selecting the 'save to' location, there is another tick box that says ‘run from custom location’. Tick this, and then select another location in the field below (it can be the same as the ‘save to’ location) and you should find that this will solve the problem.

Essentially, when you run the sims extract, it changes a couple of the SIMS files in the C:\program files\4Matrix folder - if you don't have permission to write there, it will fail and not open the extract tool. The idea of the 'run from custom location' is that it temporarily copies those files to somewhere where you can write to (you have to specify the location, i.e the same place that you chose to save the extract to).