Hi,
I just logged into my AnkiWeb account and ALL of my decks and flashcards are gone. I’m 100% sure I’m in the right account and I didn’t delete anything. I’m freaking out because I really need these for my studies. Please, is there any way to get them back?I need help urgently.
Where are you looking for them that you’re not finding them? When you say you just logged in, was that at the website?
Have you run Tools > Check Database lately (on desktop)? If not, try that.
Are these notes/cards/decks that you created on AnkiWeb (the website), and had never synced with your desktop Anki on Windows? Because if they were ever on desktop, Anki runs backups of your local database many times a day, so you can always restore to the most recent backup before they disappeared – Restoring an Automatic Backup (Recovering from Data Loss) - Anki FAQs . You’ll lose anything that has happened since that backup was created.
I’ve checked on anki web on google and the desktop app. I also checked the databases, backup and everything
Does that mean you ran the Tools > Check Database action from the menu? Or that you looked around at the database/collection?
When you checked your backups, what did you find? Were they also empty? How many did you try? Did you go to your backups folder – Managing Files - Anki Manual – and see if there was an abrupt drop in file size at some point? Did you try the backup before that size-drop?
[I don’t think you quite answered #3, so I’m going to ask it again in a different way] Did you only use these decks on AnkiWeb (the website), or did you also use them on desktop Anki (the installed app)? If you used them on desktop, are you sure you’ve opened the same profile that you have been using?
Yes i checked the databases they were empty nothing got restored.
I also checked backups there were like 4 or 5 files saved on my laptop and i checked every single one and nothing came back.
I used Anki mostly on the web to add and use my decks/cards and only logged on once or twice to the desktop app on my laptop. They disappeared from the web and desktop app too i also know i was in the right account because i never had any other anki account.
That explains a lot. If you weren’t really using desktop Anki, it wasn’t making backups. And if you weren’t keeping your collection in sync on desktop, then it might never have had those cards/notes/decks to back them up anyway. That also offers the most likely reason your collection disappeared – when you opened desktop one of those times, you were prompted to do a one-way sync and choose the wrong direction.
If the only place these decks existed was on AnkiWeb, then your only option is restoration from a server-side backup – but those are made much less frequently than your local backups. Before you noticed the problem and posted on 28 Sept, the most recent backup was from 23 Sept. [That’s also the largest of the backup files, with 67 notes and ~250 reviews.]
But I can also see that you’ve been using your collection since then, and you don’t want to lose that progress. If you want me to restore that backup to your account (which will overwrite everything there), here’s what you need to do –
Make sure that desktop Anki is fully synced with AnkiWeb. I mean really, really sure, because this will be your last chance to get any of that data.
On desktop, export all decks in APKG format, including scheduling information and deck presets. This is how you’ll get this part of your collection back.
Close desktop Anki.
Respond here to confirm that you’re ready, and you want me to restore that backup version form 23 Sept. I’ll let you know when that is done.
Open desktop Anki. When you sync you’ll be prompted to do a one-way sync – select download from AnkiWeb.
After you’ve synced, you can import the APKG you made, and bring your old and new collections together.