Hi Anki Support Team,
I am writing to urgently request help regarding my AnkiWeb account associated with this email address.
Due to being unwell for the past several months, I was completely unable to access my account or check my emails. I just logged in today and realized that I received a 30-day account expiry warning email, which unfortunately expired just 2 or 3 days ago. My AnkiWeb account is now entirely empty.
I have spent literally several hundred hours meticulously building custom decks on this account. To make matters worse, I recently had to replace my phone and laptop, meaning I have absolutely no physical access to the old hardware where my local backups were stored.
Since the deletion occurred only a couple of days ago, I am desperately hoping that a recent server snapshot or backup might still exist in your system.
Could an administrator please check if it is possible to restore my collection from a recent server backup? I would be incredibly grateful for any help you can provide to salvage this work.
I had no idea that Anki would delete files with such a short warning. I’m hoping that all my hard work isn’t lost.
Yes, the data was removed from your account after it had been inactive for at least 6 months. We delete the data from accounts in our system that aren’t being used for syncing or studying, so AnkiWeb isn’t suitable for long-term storage of your inactive collection – AnkiWeb account removal - Anki FAQs .
However that policy only affects the data on our servers. If you still have a local copy of your collection on any devices where you used Anki / AnkiMobile / AnkiDroid, you can upload your collection to AnkiWeb and resume syncing.
Generally when data is removed from an account, that includes the server-side backups. However there is one that was retained in your account – from January 2025. [Just like a local automatic backup, that does not include any media attached to your collection.] I expect that version of your collection is older than whatever you have on your device(s), but if you want me to restore it to your AnkiWeb account, please confirm.
Other things you can do right now –
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Make sure the email address you’re using for your AnkiWeb account is one that you have permanent access to. If you lose touch with that email, you won’t get important emails from us – like notification that your data is pending deletion. And if you can’t re-verify your email address annually, you might not be able to access AnkiWeb at all.
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If you know you’re going to take a long break from studying, you can create your own COLPKG backup of your collection and store that in a separate place (e.g., another device, a cloud storage account).
I don’t have access to the phone or laptop that I have used previously as neither are still in operation.
If the only thing that is left backed up has none of the media that I painstakingly sourced, edited and attached or created myself over many years, then it is pretty much worthless to me 
Its a shame. I always defended Anki when everyone else would talk about how poorly managed and user-unfriendly the platform is. But 1 email 30 days prior to wiping out years worth of my work (YEARS!!), that is just total disregard for users on your platform. No need to point to ToS. I believe you. But it doesn’t mean that it’s the right thing to do. Someone has a bout of bad health, and you wipe out many hundreds of hours of their work. I would suggest if you care about users of your platform, you do more to make people aware that you are very willing to delete their entire base if they are incapacitated unexpectedly for a few months.
Very disappointed and going now to join the non-believing crowd
What kind of measures would you recommend?
Some off the top of my head:
- More than 1 email prior to deleting and greater than 1 month warning. The majority of people live busy lives, so 1 email to warn of an impending deletion 30 days prior to permanent deletion is extreme. It not an uncommon scenario for a person who is travelling for 4 weeks with limited access to their email, or (as I was) getting medical attention and not capable of staying up-to-date on emails would have no warning or opportunity to take steps to prevent it. Many companies who store my data have provided me more than 5 warnings over a 6 month period prior to deletion, including escalating urgency in the subject line, to prevent this exact scenario. I think at a minimum, 3 emails across a 2 month period would provide some opportunity for those who missed the only email sent under this policy.
- Another method would be a pop up alert on whichever platform being accessed at least once annually to remind people to store their own back-up. I had assumed (albeit wrongly) that my data was safe on anki servers. I hadn’t read the ToS (as most others wouldn’t have also) and therefore had no idea that they had an aggressive purge policy.
- Similar to point 2, an annual email with a subject line that highlights that users need to take steps to avoid losing their data
I know it’s my fault that the data is gone. I should have been aware of this policy. But I feel like the process here isn’t designed around the real world. 1 email and 30 days then delete many hundred hours of hard work is just harsh and provides no room for people who, like me, have things to deal with and are not able to be up-to-date with my email box.
The platform administrators are under no obligation to do anything. My point is, if they care about the users of their platform, they could do better.
I ask you. Do you disagree?