I’m currently sharing a deck of notes with a friend, and this exchange is ongoing, resulting in a growing collection of notes over time.
Here’s the situation:
I’ve compiled a deck containing around a thousand words and phrases for my own learning, which I add to regularly. While I’ve been diligently studying all the entries in this deck, my friend is starting from scratch and plans to learn ten new entries each day.
I understand that I can use the “Browser” feature in Anki to select ten entries for the first day, then export them using “Notes” > “Export Notes” (with “Include scheduling information” unchecked) and hit “Export” to generate a deck for my friend to study. This process can then be repeated for each subsequent set of ten entries.
However, my concern is about the accumulation of multiple decks over time, cluttering my friend’s Anki interface. I’d prefer to update and share new entries with my friend within a single deck, ensuring a seamless learning experience without disrupting the scheduling or progress of previously learned material.
While we haven’t attempted this yet, I’m curious if it’s possible to update the shared deck incrementally, gradually adding ten new words each day while preserving the due dates and progress of previous entries. This way, my friend can consistently receive ten new words daily for study, maintaining a smooth learning flow.
I’m seeking guidance on the most effective approach to achieve this, ensuring that both the existing and new entries are seamlessly integrated into a single, continuously expanding deck.
I appreciate any insights or suggestions on how to best manage this process.
When you export the first 10 notes from your Deck called “ThisDeck” – your friend will import a 10-note Deck called “ThisDeck.” When you export another 10 notes from “ThisDeck” – your friend will import another 10 notes into the same deck. (This works the same for an arrangement of subdecks, if you have them.) You should take a look at the Updating section – Packaged Decks - Anki Manual – to make sure that you’re doing what you need to make the shared deck updateable.
But you don’t have to do this incrementally either. You can share the entire deck at once. To limit to “ten new entries each day,” your friend can set their daily New card limit to 10, so that only 10 cards are introduced per day [or 20 if they are trying to do the forward and reverse cards for 10 notes]. Deck Options - Anki Manual
I’m unable to share the entire deck at once because I want my friend to focus on learning a set of 10 new daily words first. He needs to study the lesson text and listen to its audio to grasp those words before diving into the rest of the deck. If I share the whole deck, he might feel overwhelmed by unfamiliar words. It’s important for him to concentrate on the words introduced in each lesson rather than worrying about future ones.
My plan is to share the .apkg file for the first lesson, which contains the initial set of 10 words. Then, I’ll share the next set of 10 words for tomorrow’s lesson separately. By importing them, he’ll seamlessly integrate the new words into the existing deck. This way, he’ll have a single deck with a cumulative daily increase of 10 new words, without any conflicts or loss of previous progress or settings.
Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to test this on another PC yet to confirm the outcome. I’m hoping that by sharing the new 10 words, they will simply be added to the original deck I provided him with. This will ensure that there’s only one deck, steadily growing by 10 words each day, instead of creating separate decks for each set of 10 words or subdecks.
I hope this clarifies my intentions. Let me know if you have any questions.
It does clarify, so feel free to disregard the parts about ways to avoid doing this incrementally. But the rest of the answer should still resolve this for you.
You can try it yourself, and you don’t need a separate computer. Just make a few of these single-lesson apkg files, and then open a fresh (temporary) profile on your own computer – Profiles - Anki Manual. You can import them into that and see if it matches what you want to have happen.
I’m pleased to report that it worked smoothly. I tested it with another profile and imported the next set of decks as new daily words. There were no conflicts or negative impacts on the previous entries, and the due dates remained unchanged. I appreciate your assistance. Thank you!
Ideally, each lesson should consist of 10 sets. Here’s the plan: my friend will start by reading the lesson dialogues, listening to their audio files, and then proceeding to learn and review the new words specific to that lesson. They’ll continue this process for each subsequent lesson. As the number of lessons increases, they’ll have to decide whether to stick with a daily limit of 10 words or increase it. If I share the entire deck, which includes 1000 words, my friend might encounter unfamiliar words that they haven’t learned yet. To avoid this, I’ll guide them to learn each lesson individually, providing them with new words only after they’ve mastered the current lesson, rather than overwhelming them with unknown words from future lessons."