Anki .apkg export - meaning of due date number

Anki Help
1

Hi,
This will be kinda technical.

I wanted to have some more ease and freedom in changing due dates in Anki, and I thought of opening the export .apkg (or colpkg, doesn’t matter) file in a SQL editor. The due date happens to be represented as an int number in the ‘cards’ table. An increase by one will move the card to the next day.

Question: What is the actual meaning of this number. In one deck the value for today is something like 400, and in the other over 2000. Why is that?

Screenshot 2024-03-04 210126
Screenshot 2024-03-04 210126824×612 166 KB

2

I do hope you’ll be careful messing around with the database directly. You should at least have a map – Database Structure · ankidroid/Anki-Android Wiki · GitHub – but it would also be good to know what you’re doing.

3

For new cards, due is the position, which usually controls their order of appearance in the new study queue (the order also depends on the Display Order options).