Hello - my AnkiWeb account (registered to my uni email) synced a medical school collection of roughly two years’ work, last synced around May 2026. The collection has been removed for inactivity - the account now shows only an empty Default deck. Unfortunately my laptop has since suffered a logic board failure, so I have no local copy while it’s with a data recovery lab. I understand deletion is the policy and this is my responsibility, but I’ve seen staff occasionally find a single retained backup on expired accounts. Could you please check whether any server-side backup remains for mine? Even an old one would be enormously valuable. Thank you.
The AnkiWeb account attached to the email address you used to post here wasn’t last synced in May 2026. Are you talking about the same account I can see?
If so, the only backup retained in your account from before your data was deleted is from December 2025. [Just like a local automatic backup, that does not include any media attached to your collection.] I expect that version of your collection is older than whatever you have on your device(s), but if you want me to restore it to your AnkiWeb account, please confirm.
To get back your local copy of your collection (and your media), make sure they preserve your Anki2 data folder. Managing Files - Anki Manual
Other things you can do right now –
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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.
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If you know you’re going to take a long break from studying, you can create your own COLPKG backup of your collection and store that in a separate place (e.g., another device, a cloud storage account).
Many thanks - that’s great news. Yes, please restore the December 2025 backup, I confirm.
Just to check my understanding: this restore only affects my AnkiWeb server copy - it has no effect on the data still on my broken MacBook. And if the recovery lab does retrieve my full Anki2 folder later, I can import that locally and sync with “Upload” to replace the December version. If I’ve got any of that wrong, I’d be grateful for a correction - but please go ahead with the restore either way
I have restored that backup to your account.
Correct. Nothing will change on your laptop unless or until you sync it with AnkiWeb. Because of the restoration, the next time you sync will be a one-way sync, and to get the restored version you’ll need to download from AnkiWeb. But that also means there’s no way for you to accidentally download that version.
Not quite. If you have your Anki2 folder, you just need to put it in the correct location (see the link) while Anki is not running, and when you run the app, it will automatically be there. [You may want to start Anki in safe mode to avoid auto-syncing.] But yes, the next step after that will be force a one-way sync and upload to AnkiWeb.
If you end up studying with the restored version, but then you also get the original version back, you’ll need to merge them – Syncing with AnkiWeb - Anki Manual .
Massive THANK YOU!