Anki cards not showing up in deck

Anki Help
1

I imported an Anki deck and later added my own cards to it, using tags to organise them. I’m now trying to study the material from scratch by using Custom Study sessions filtered by individual tags.

The issue I’m facing is that only the older cards (from the original imported deck) appear in the Custom Study sessions, while the newer cards I added myself do not show up at all. However, I can still see these newer cards in the Browse section, and they have the correct tags applied.

So far, I’ve tried several things to fix this:

  • Restarting Anki

  • Updating Anki to the latest version

  • Changing the new card order to Random (Deck Options → New Cards → Order → Random), so it doesn’t strictly follow the queue

  • Repositioning the new cards (selecting them in Browse → right-click → Reposition → moving them to the front of the queue)

I also considered using filtered decks as a workaround, but found them too time-consuming and not ideal for my workflow.

None of these have worked so far. The new cards clearly exist, are tagged correctly, and are visible in Browse, but they are not being included in Custom Study sessions by tag.

I’d really appreciate any help understanding why this is happening and how to get Anki to include these newer tagged cards so I can study everything together from scratch.

2

You described the troubleshooting steps you have tried, but might be even more essential, is telling about how did you arrive to the issue in the first place.
What steps do you take to initiate a custom study? How do you check that there are only the older cards there? If the check is based on numbers, how many cards of each type you have? What is your deck structure? What tags do you use, as an example?
Also, are any of the cards suspended? Do the cards you made yourself show in the browser as “New”?

3

Most “custom study” options are just UI shortcuts to making filtered decks. There’s nothing more time consuming about filtered decks since you don’t have to delete them, you can “rebuild” them instead.

4

To create a custom study deck, I click on the main deck, then click “Custom Study” at the bottom. From there, I choose “Study by card state or tag,” set the number of cards to 9999 (since none of my tags exceed this), and then select “New cards only.” I then choose each tag individually to study.

After noticing the issue, I also tried using the option “All cards in random order (don’t reschedule),” but this did not resolve the problem.

I first noticed something was wrong when I studied a few tags and then checked the Browse section to see how many cards I had completed for each topic. I realised that some cards visible in Browse were not appearing in the custom study decks. These missing cards had “New #…” in the Due column.

Thinking this might be due to the queue order (i.e. cards being shown from New #1 onwards), I tried changing the order to random and also manually repositioned the cards. For example, one card was labelled “New #10390,” and I reset it to “New #0.” However, this still did not fix the issue.

In terms of structure, I have one large deck that was shared with me, where cards are organised using tags for different topics. For example, tags are structured like “Obstetrics::Anaemia.” I then added my own cards to this deck under the same tag system for topics I needed to reinforce.

I have checked and none of the cards are suspended. In the Browser, the cards that are not appearing in Custom Study are still labelled as “New.”

Despite all of this, the newer cards I added are still not showing up in Custom Study sessions by tag, even though they clearly exist, are tagged correctly, and appear as new cards in Browse.

5

Thank you, that makes sense. I didn’t realise Custom Study was essentially creating filtered decks in the background.

I think my hesitation with filtered decks is more about workflow than setup. I’m trying to quickly go through different tags one by one, and Custom Study feels more straightforward for that since it’s all in one place and doesn’t require managing or rebuilding separate decks each time.

I did try using a filtered deck just now, and I noticed that it does include all the cards correctly. However, I found it a bit less convenient since I have to manually type out the tags rather than selecting them like in Custom Study.

Ideally, I’d like to understand why this isn’t working through Custom Study itself, since in theory it should be able to pull all cards for a given tag (including new ones). In my case, it’s consistently missing the newer cards I added, even though those same cards do appear when I use a filtered deck.

Of course, if Custom Study isn’t capable of doing this properly, I’m happy to switch to filtered decks but I’d really like to understand why there’s a difference in behaviour between the two.

6

Compare the deck options of a working filtered deck with the corresponding “custom study” deck to see what’s causing it to fail.

For this test, it’d be better to choose a few tags to keep it simple. Also, make sure that you empty/delete the filtered decks since cards cannot be in more than one filtered deck at once.

7

Is this the same deck to which you have added your cards?

8

There’s no inherent difference between a Filtered Deck created manually and a Filtered Deck created from the Custom Study menu. Since you’ve confirmed that the cards can be added to a Filtered Deck (i.e. they aren’t suspended, buried, or in another Filtered Deck) – the only difference left is exactly what you’re searching for.

To create a Filtered Deck manually, I always recommend building your search filter in the Browse window first. That way you can take advantage of the sidebar tools to quickly add your tags, and you’ll know what cards to expect. From there Edit > Create Filtered Deck is the easiest path.

9

Sorry if this is a basic question, but how would I go about comparing them?

10

Yes I have one big deck and then they are separated into different topics using tags.

11

Do you mean copying and pasting the tag from the sidebar in the Browse section?

Also I just wanted to say thank you all for your help, I really appreciate it.

12

Read the link I gave you. You can assemble your search by clicking and special keys.

13

Take screenshots of the deck options of both the filtered deck that works and the “custom study deck” (which is technically a filtered deck). Then open the screenshots side by side and look at the options one by one. See which one is different between them. That should tell you what’s wrong with the “custom study” one, if not post the screenshots here.