Anki revisions: catching up

Anki Scheduling
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Hello there! :blush:

I’m fairly new to Anki, so please bear with me. I’ve paused doing cards for a while due to health issues, and now I have over 200 reviews piled up, but I can’t recall them. Additionally, I need to study new cards daily because I have more than 2500 new cards to learn before my exam in a few weeks. I watched a YouTube video by Anking ( Anki:How to Miss a Day (making up skipped days or studying ahead without a penalty)), which suggests creating two filtered decks if you’ve fallen behind. Here are the suggested settings for the filtered decks (originally from a Reddit post):

  1. Create a “Filtered Deck” (use ctrl+F or cmd+F as a shortcut) for “Due Today” and cap it at 9999. Copy is:due prop:due>-1 into the text entry line (this is an altered formula from the Anki manual). Sort it by random. Make sure the “reschedule cards based on answers in this deck” box IS checked. After you hit build, it’ll pop up in your deck list as “Filtered Deck 1”. Click the options button and rename it “#Due Today” (so it appears at the top of your screen). Do this every day to stay on track.
  2. Create a filtered deck named “Overdue” for the deck you’re behind on. To do this, from the home screen, click on the deck you’re behind on to open the screen with information about the deck. Click ctrl+F. The insert line should auto-code to pull cards from the deck you were in. Sort it by “relative overdueness”. Make sure the “reschedule cards based on answers in this deck” box IS checked. Rename the deck “#Overdue”. This way, you’ll see the cards you’re most likely to forget first and won’t waste time on cards you’re less likely to forget while catching up. I prefer to cap mine at 100 and rebuild it as many times per day as I can. But you can also set it to a certain target/cap every day (for example, if you want to do 300 cards each day). Continue this process until your actual deck hits ZERO.

So, I tried this out for my deck, but instead of using **is:due prop:due>-1**, I used the Anking suggestion is:due prop:due>-3 with cards selected by: oldest first, for the “#due today” deck with a limit of 99999, and is:due prop:due<=-3 with cards selected by: relative overdueness, for the “#overdue” deck, with a limit of 40.

My problem is that in the “#due today” deck, I only have 16 cards, and in the “#overdue” deck, I have the 40 I wanted to see. In my original deck, I had 142 learning cards, 101 review cards (243 in total), and it also says 243 young cards. Now, after creating these decks, I have in the original deck: 65 learning cards, 98 review cards, and 185 young cards.

Previously, in my deck, I had 243 - 16 (#due today) - 40 (#overdue) = 187 cards. So, I thought this is the number of cards I should have in my original deck, but it doesn’t add up. Also, I’m not sure if it makes sense to study the cards this way. I’m freaking out because I don’t know what the best settings would be, and I also buried siblings in the original deck (if this is relevant).

Additionally, I don’t understand if I need to rebuild the deck every day, and what will happen to the cards which are now in the deck. I hope someone can help me with this; I’ve read a lot, but Anki is so overwhelming. Thank you very much.

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Filtered decks never select suspended or buried cards.

In the Browse window, you could try:
is:due prop:due>-3 -is:suspended -is:buried
and presumably this will match the cards that your filtered deck shows you.

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A filtered deck whose search is based on “dueness” should be rebuilt every day, because the set of due cards changes every day. But “rebuilding” simply means presenting you with a fresh set of cards to review. The terminology is maybe too alarming. It is not some drastic restructuring operation.

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Thank you so much, would you say this is the best way to learn these cards? Also do you have a recommendation for the settings of my 2500 new cards?

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I can’t give a recommendation because I use Anki for languages and self-study, for reviewing and refreshing vocabulary I already know rather than for learning new words, and it’s all open-ended without any deadlines or exams. So my experience and usage is very different from yours. Maybe someone else can offer suggestions.

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oh, but thank you so much, you already helped me a lot! Hopefully someone else can help me out.

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