Collection too large to upload to AnkiWeb

Anki Help
1

Hello everyone, I have now unfortunately received this error message that my collection is too large to send to ankiweb. Ive noticed this is an issue that arises quite frequently and have tried multiple different recommendations but am still getting the error. As of now I have Checked the database, I checked Media and deleted unused files (which was actually a metric ton so i thought that was gonna be what helped), checked database again, went through and emptied trash, deleted all my miscellaneous profiles and still am getting the error message.

I would like to reference this post I found: Trouble Uploading Deck to AnkiWeb Due to Large Collection File Size - #2 by dae

I tried what was recommended here, searching for http://127.0.0.1:\d+/ and replacing with nothing, 50 cards updated but alas the error message still came up. I am also referencing this page because the OP mentioned this error came up for him after an update of AnKing Custom Note Types which was the same that happened with me this evening.

So if anyone has any more recommendations, id greatly appreciate it.

1 Like
2

My error message for reference.

image
image818×354 40.3 KB

3

Hi, the Note Size addon can help to identify huge notes in the collection:

image
image903×441 103 KB

Sort it by the “Size (texts)” column, because the attached files are not included in the size limit.

1 Like
4

As just an update, for the sake of curiosity I decided to just reboot to the first back up I had today before I attempted to update to the most recent AnKing Note type and the issue resolved. My deck is currently at 280MB. So it seems that in attempting to update to the newest Note Type it added an extra 100MB?

Either way at this point my entire collection is purely from AnkiHub (50k cards). So if anyone can tell me how I can trim some of that 280MB before this happens again ill still be greatly appreciative.

1 Like
5

Thank you! I will have a took to see if there’s anything weird

6

Where to look for what is making your collection so large: Constant Errors Uploading / Sync - #4 by Danika_Dakika (including the Note Size add-on).

1 Like
7

Thank you so much! Just to circle back to the original problem, I can confirm it is the AnKing Note Types Easy Customization add-on which is making my collection jump 100MB @AnKingMed. I checked my past backups and noticed they were pretty much constant until i tried to update yesterday, so today I went in and clicked “update note types” in the addon and the same thing that happened yesterday happened again. I got the spinny wheel for like 15 minutes, the update lagged so I forced quit and when I opened it up again my collection had jumped from 250MB to 350MB. So safe to say I will stop doing that for a bit but figured I’d share the culprit.

Back to trimming the remaining fat, in terms of the addon, it looks like my largest card is the AnKing Pancreatitis card at 11KB. My collection is currently at 256MB, with 16 MB from revlogs. My media is 6.4GB (this is purely 3 AnkiHub decks so not sure if that is what the expected size should be). And pretty much for the last month my backups have all been consistently around 30MB. Sooooo does any of that seem out of the usual?

8

An 11KB note isn’t a big deal if it stands alone, but if you have a lot of those > 2KB notes [drawing an arbitrary line that might not be relevant in your collection], those can add up quickly. The question would be – is it 11KB because it’s got so much necessary information in it? Or is it 11KB because it is bogged down with unnecessary information or with hidden/repetitive HTML/CSS?

16MB from revlogs is pretty high, but (a) if you have a lot of review history from a (typically) high med-school workload, it’s less strange, and (b) 16MB isn’t a lot compared to the size of your collection overall.

Do you use “reschedule on change” a lot? Did you import someone else’s old review history with decks at some point? Those are about the only things I can think of that would show up in your revlogs and might be fixable.

That’s on the high side, but I know some of those decks can be media-heavy. It won’t make a difference in syncing, and it sounds like you’re already doing what you can to keep unused media cleaned up.

That’s more compression that I’d expect to see from a 256MB collection. It’s not exactly linear, but those compression rates are often around 3-to-1. I don’t know what that means, but I’m flagging it for myself in case you discover something later.

I don’t know what the add-on could be doing that would cause that, so I’ll defer to the AnKing folks to answer.

It does make me wonder though if maybe your collection is hiding some of its size in unusual places, like extensively customized note types that are no longer used.

9

@abdo Any idea why this would be? I can’t think of anything other than potentially the logo images that are included with it.

@NickZazz have you tried emptying unused media and deleting the trash?

1 Like
10

Media files are not counted, so they can’t cause this error.

I recall we had reports where some users had their note type templates duplicated thousands of times for some reason (might be a rare bug in the note types add-on but I’m unsure how it could happen). Example:

@NickZazz Can you check your templates? Follow the solution here if you find the issue:

1 Like
11

@Danika_Dakika

My deck is has about 2.5 years of almost daily review history to it, but that said there is a few months worth of review history (from what i can tell from the heat-map) from the person i originally downloaded the deck from.

I pretty much never use reschedule on change. I tried going into the FSRS addon and using the “delete redundant revlog entries” function but it didnt change the collection size or the 16MB or revlog.

Outside of changing some font colors and a having a field show with every card, i havent really touched the note types in any other way.

@AnKingMed @abdo My experience with that add-on does tend to be the same where it takes FOREVER to update the addon and then forever to update the cards (yesterday it attempted to update for about 30 minutes before i finally force quit), not sure if that is the same for everyone else. Other than that I have been emptying my media/trash (admittedly i didn’t know this was a thing until after this all occurred, but it honestly hasn’t changed much).

I clicked through all of my templates, front/back/styling, and it doesn’t appear to me like anything is repeating or unusually standing out. Admittedly my knowledge of computer science is almost non-existent, so if sending a copy of my deck might make things easier for you guys just lmk.

12

Can you export a copy without media? You can share it quickly using this website: https://gofile.io

13

Sure thing, let me know if this works for you:

14

I found the issue. it’s the unused note type named “IO-one by one (OMM for COMLEX / Jwill)”. Delete it from Tools > Manage Note types then run Check Database. Your collection size should go down to ~160 MB.

Note: Do not try to preview the templates in the Card Types screen. Anki will hang forever. The back template has 4 million lines.

Can you use Help > About Anki > Copy Debug Info and paste the text here? I want to confirm which add-on is causing that.

3 Likes
15

This is embarrassing, I swear I clicked through most of them yesterday, I must’ve skipped over this one :sob:. I deleted it and it did in fact drop down so thank you so much! For the sake of curiosity, I also ran the Anki Note Type add-on and was able to “update notetypes” without a problem, so that must have also been contributing to my original problem as well! The add-on mustve been getting caught from processing all those repeats :sweat_smile:

Anki 25.09.2 (3890e12c) (ao)
Python 3.13.5 Qt 6.9.1 PyQt 6.9.1
Platform: macOS-26.1-arm64-arm-64bit-Mach-O

===Add-ons (active)===
(add-on provided name [Add-on folder, installed at, version, is config changed])
AMBOSS add-on [‘0amboss_addon’, 2024-08-05T10:24, ‘None’, ‘’]
Add Hyperlink [‘318752047’, 2023-06-18T07:39, ‘None’, ‘’]
Advanced Browser [‘874215009’, 2024-10-27T10:20, ‘None’, mod]
Advanced Card Styles [‘1625103157’, 2021-12-28T12:49, ‘None’, ‘’]
AnKing Note Types Easy Customization [‘952691989’, 2025-12-16T04:40, ‘None’, mod]
Anki Spell Checker - Check misspelled in the Editor Fixed by Shige [‘143753963’, 2025-06-21T18:15, ‘None’, mod]
AnkiHub [‘1322529746’, 2025-11-12T09:49, ‘None’, mod]
BetterSearch [‘1052724801’, 2025-04-06T17:13, ‘None’, mod]
Browser Resizer [‘1435775540’, 2025-01-28T06:03, ‘None’, mod]
Browser TableEditor side-by-side horizontal split [‘831846358’, 2022-01-25T17:11, ‘None’, mod]
Button Colours Good Again [‘2494384865’, 2022-09-27T06:18, ‘None’, ‘’]
Clickable Tags v20 [‘1739176371’, 2022-01-30T17:58, ‘None’, ‘’]
Closet For Anki [‘272311064’, 2022-08-12T04:27, ‘None’, ‘’]
Colorful Tags Hierarchical Tags [‘594329229’, 2022-09-15T11:06, ‘None’, ‘’]
Custom Background Image and Gear Icon [‘1210908941’, 2025-12-17T08:00, ‘None’, mod]
Customize Keyboard Shortcuts [‘24411424’, 2023-11-01T05:17, ‘None’, mod]
Edit Field During Review Cloze [‘385888438’, 2025-08-04T10:13, ‘6.23’, mod]
Extended Tag AddEdit Dialog [‘1135507717’, 2023-11-11T11:58, ‘None’, mod]
FSRS Helper Postpone Advance Load Balance Easy Days Disperse Siblings [‘759844606’, 2025-11-06T22:32, ‘None’, mod]
Fastbar- with nightmode support [‘46611790’, 2025-01-27T17:52, ‘None’, ‘’]
Find cards from UWorld test [‘444814983’, 2024-07-19T02:19, ‘None’, ‘’]
High Yield Tags [‘1918380616’, 2023-01-10T14:14, ‘None’, ‘’]
Hint Hotkeys [‘1844908621’, 2023-04-14T10:13, ‘None’, ‘’]
Image Occlusion Enhanced [‘1374772155’, 2022-04-09T03:15, ‘None’, ‘’]
ImageResizer [‘1214357311’, 2023-12-02T20:58, ‘None’, ‘’]
More Decks Stats and Time Left [‘1556734708’, 2025-06-23T16:44, ‘None’, mod]
Note Size - sort notes by size and see collection size [‘1188705668’, 2025-12-13T13:50, ‘v2.11.0’, ‘’]
Puppy Reinforcement [‘1722658993’, 2023-11-16T07:59, ‘None’, ‘’]
Review Heatmap [‘1771074083’, 2022-06-29T21:43, ‘None’, ‘’]
Search and Replace Tags [‘138501288’, 2017-08-29T14:58, ‘None’, ‘’]
Symbols As You Type [‘2040501954’, 2025-01-05T14:55, ‘None’, ‘’]
Symbols [‘1461102936’, 2024-02-10T11:53, ‘None’, mod]
Transfer scheduling data from one card to another [‘94685914’, 2024-08-09T10:32, ‘None’, ‘’]
Wrapper meta-addon [‘396502676’, 2025-07-09T11:27, ‘None’, ‘’]
add-on dialog searchfilter bar [‘561945101’, 2023-10-18T12:22, ‘None’, ‘’]

===IDs of active AnkiWeb add-ons===
1052724801 1135507717 1188705668 1210908941 1214357311 1322529746 1374772155 138501288 1435775540 143753963 1461102936 1556734708 1625103157 1722658993 1739176371 1771074083 1844908621 1918380616 2040501954 24411424 2494384865 272311064 318752047 385888438 396502676 444814983 46611790 561945101 594329229 759844606 831846358 874215009 94685914 952691989

===Add-ons (inactive)===
(add-on provided name [Add-on folder, installed at, version, is config changed])
Image Editor [‘307397307’, 2022-09-08T00:09, ‘None’, mod]
Special Fields [‘1102281552’, 2025-02-25T08:07, ‘None’, mod]