On the “home screen” of the Anki app, the following currently happens:
Deck A is downloaded.
Deck B is then downloaded.
Let’s say Deck A and B both share 100 cards in common. Let’s say I’ve completed Deck A (for example, taken the exam for it) but am working through Deck B. However, 100 of the cards in Deck B won’t show up in Deck B because they are counted as being in Deck A.
This is not usually an issue because tags can unsuspend the cards needed. However, some decks unfortunately do not have good tag systems. In those cases, it can be difficult to find which cards in Deck A are also supposed to be a part of Deck B. (Another example is if Deck B does not specify which of its cards it shares with Deck A.)
And so, this leaves a few options:
Uninstall Deck A and then reinstall it again. This is time consuming and has other disadvantages. For example, say Deck A is a much larger deck (and serves as the primary Deck), and a different topic (that is currently suspended in Deck A) will be used in the future once Deck B is completed and suspended. This would mean that one would have to uninstall and reinstall Deck B afterwards.
Use an inadequate tag system for these decks.
The proposal as follows:
If it is possible, I would suggest the ability to rearrange the Decks on the “home screen” of Anki app. In doing so, whichever cards are shared amongst two decks would appear into the topmost deck amongst them. This would save time and be a relatively easy workaround.
It’s about which cards are in each deck after an import.
More specifically, it is about ease of unsuspending.
So, I see there are multiple organization systems in Anki.
One is the tag system.
The other is the “Decks” (also visible in “Browse”). Perhaps it may be useful for there to be an option to use the respective “Deck” to unsuspend all the various cards under it. Presumably (in example above) that would mean that some would appear under both Deck A and Deck B, when unsuspended from either in the “Browse” section
Not sure if I’m explaining this feature super well. I’ll try to break it down as follows:
Deck A and Deck B share 100 cards in common.
Deck A and B are both suspended.
Deck B (from “Browse” menu) is unsuspended in full. This unsuspends say 2000 cards in Deck B “main menu” of Anki and 100 cards in Deck A “main menu” of Anki.
This doesn’t affect tag system since they continue to effectively work separately
Decks are folders that hold cards (and other decks). Decks/parent-decks/subdecks are the unit that a study session is built around, and by which Options are applied to cards/study sessions.
Tags are applied at the note-level and carry through to every card created from that note. You can apply multiple tags to a note, and even arrange your tags in a hierarchy (just like for decks). For the sort of overlapping organization you’re talking about, you should use tags, not decks.
Back to your original question about what happens on import –
To understand this, it will probably help to grasp that what you’re importing are notes, not cards. [1] Anki then creates cards in specified decks for each note that is imported (based on the instructions in the note type). If a note already exists, it is either skipped or updated (depending on the import options you select).
But the existing cards of those existing notes are deliberately not moved to different decks. This protects your work – prioritizing any deck organization you’ve already done in your collection over the organization in the APKG you are importing. [2]
When the import is completed, the post-import report tells you exactly what happened with each note. That’s the best time to intervene and manually reorganize the cards from any already-existing notes that you want to move to the new deck hierarchy. See –
There is an open feature request to allow reorganization on import (and an add-on that purports to do that). If that interests you, you can add your support/use-case there: Relocate Existing Cards During New Import . ↩︎