I use Anki 2.1.21. I appreciate the work of you guys on Anki. It accelerated my learning to another level. A few months back, I noted that my AnKing deck failed to bring up images on preview though I am never unsuspended them at which time also, there were a lot of unused media the number of them I can’t remember clearly. Unused media took a lot of space which I before now had synced on AnkiWeb (shows about 7.2GB of media, must have been due to this). Also, I deleted SVG files from the collection media believing it would solve the problem. Primitive thought! I stumbled on the overhaul V8 version, downloaded it, deleted the former version and imported it into the same Anki account. After reading a series of post on unused media on the Anki subreddit and other similar platforms, I decided to delete those unused media. Deleting this deck went without hitches. After importing the new version, I decided to check for any changes and glad to know that the AnKing deck was unaffected but other image occlusion cards except (except Image Q/A 2.0-e1700 cards) I never took notice of now displaying the same issues. The no of unused media seemed to remain the same. I’ve read the image occlusion thread of Anki forum and it couldn’t help too. I consulted the Anki Subreddit platform and decided to restore the deleted files. These cards show a white box with green splashes in their image slots. These are the screenshots to help provide sufficient information. Any help would be appreciated!
Maybe you have accidentally deleted media used by in the image occlusion notes?
Didn’t the Check Media tool report anything about files referenced by notes but not found in the media folder?
It did before I deleted the unused files some referenced by the cards but not in the media folder, others in media folders but not used by the cards. Could restoring them help and how if possible?
@dae, please is it advisable I import another deck now?
@dae @abdo Thank you, sir. I was able to recover them using a 3rd party app but the images are still not showing up. Also, they are not premade decks
The restored SVG files came with a $ sign before them, can it cause the occluded images not to appear?
@dae, could restore deleted media from Anki web help the situation and how if possible?
@dae I fear that the media files I restored have been corrupted because of the third-party app
You’ll need to use some external program to rename the files back to the correct names.
@dae, I appreciate your invaluable assistance so far. I tried to find programs that can correct the file names to the correct names but I couldn’t find them including but not limited to Stellar Data recovery, EaseUS data recovery, disk drill. I was deterred from some by the costly subscription fee. I also tried recovering with programs that claim to recover with the correct names which also didn’t work. Do you have any recommendations?
If the files are intact and the only problem is the leading on them, then some sort of bulk renaming program that allows you to remove the may help, but I do not know of any off the top of my head I’m afraid.
@dae, I used bulk renaming utility to rename them. I duplicated the SVG files, about 9200 (from self-made cards) of them. I removed the dollar sign before the SVG files and added 'pastes as a prefix to those that did not have the dollar sign as a prefi which didn’t work. In another duplicate, I changed the name to 'J (serial number), it didn’t work either. I added all these duplicates to the collection.media folder. I checked the database and checked the unused media files and the no of unused media increased. Those affected cards also still fail to bring up their occluded images. The date of these files show March 17 but I remember deleting them on March 16, I perceive they have been overwritten, is there a way to reverse that? On opening the SVG files with chrome, those red occlusion boxes come up. Is there a way to locate their previous file name and rename them one by one?
I’m afraid if the recovered images differ in more than just a leading character, such as if the recovery software gave them random filenames, then I’m afraid there will be no way to re-associate them with your cards except manually, one by one.
@dae, I copied the SVG files from the collection folders and pasted them into another folder on Documents named UNTOUCHED ANKI, so I am dealing only with that folder no longer on the Anki collection. media folder. I tried using the properties tab to remove personal information (the name specifically) from the duplicated copy and pasted it into the Anki folder, the system rejected it saying there has the same name. So I skipped them and none of them was pasted into the collection. media folder. One of the image occlusion self-made cards I had been keeping an eye on suddenly showed the images together with the occlusion box on one of its review, I don’t know how it got to be. Maybe we can use that to rescue the other images. This is the image of that SVG file below.
@dae am very grateful for your assistance so far. I finally figured it out. Because of the issues with SVG files I didn’t sync my profiles to AnkiWeb. So I merely opened another profile on the same computer, changed the Gmail of the Anki account and downloaded it from the web. I went to the collection. media folder of the new profile copied all the SVG files and pasted them into the normal profile. Interestingly, it worked out. All the image occlusions are now working perfectly. So right now I am going to upload the full connection. You will always be in my prayers. I have tried searching for the subreddit posts that misled but couldn’t find them. To others who are reading this post right now, never tamper with Any Anki file FOR ANY REASON on your local disc EXCEPT WITH THE HELP OF A WELL-KNOWLEDGEABLE PERSON. I am so glad
Glad to hear things are working now 