Hello,
I recently found out that all of my Anki decks are gone.
I reactivated my account earlier this year, but when I checked it again recently, all of my decks had disappeared. I had thousands of cards that I used for studying, so losing them is a major problem for me.
Is there any way to restore or recover my decks and cards?
I would really appreciate any help.
Thank you for your time.
I’m looking at the account connected to the email address you used to post here. The data was removed from this account after it had been inactive for at least 6 months.
Reactivating it in March restarted the clock for account activity. But then you left it inactive for another 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 . This will keep happening every 6 months that your account is inactive.
That policy only affects the data on our servers. If you still have a local copy of your collection on any of the devices where you used Anki (or AnkiMobile or AnkiDroid), you can upload your collection to AnkiWeb and resume syncing. That’s the best way to get back the most updated version of your collection.
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 March 2026. [Just like a local automatic backup from one of the apps, that does not include any media attached to your collection.] If you want me to restore it to your AnkiWeb account, please confirm.
Other things you can do right now –
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.
If you know you’re going to take a long break from studying, you can create your own COLPKG backup of your collection from any of the apps, and store that in a separate place (e.g., another device, a cloud storage account).
Thank you very much for your help!
Yes, please restore the March 2026 backup to my AnkiWeb account. I really appreciate it!
I’ll make sure to keep my account active from now on and create separate backups of my decks to prevent this from happening again.
One last question: the computer I used to study with Anki broke down some time ago, but I still have its SSD. Do you know if it’s possible to recover my decks and cards from that SSD?
Thank you again for your time and assistance!
I restored that to your account. On your next sync, select download from AnkiWeb.
Sure. If you can locate your Anki2 folder – Managing Files - Anki Manual – it has everything you need.