I opened anki today and a lot of my images and audio files that i had in my decks have been lost, is there anyway to get them back through an ankiweb backup?
Thanks!
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hi, I’m not an expert but here’s what I would try to do in your situation: find the backup folder. On iOS for example, it’s in the Files app > On My Iphone > Anki > Backups. then share the backup and import the latest backup that still includes your media files back to Anki. This should duplicate all your decks. Then just delete the decks that have not been imported. Not sure if it works though. Good luck.
I just read the anki documentation and appearantly the backups do not store media unfortunately. Sorry for the false hope. Maybe there is another way.
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- Did you do something to delete them – like delete them from your
collection.mediafolder? - Did this happen on a new device that you are syncing for the first time?
- Have you run Tools > Check Media to see if those files are reported as missing?
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I changed computers so i transfered the whole anki2 folder, i’ve done it like that other times when i format my computer and never had an issue.
Yep they are reported as missing
If you copied the entire Anki2 directory, you have everything that you had before.
- Are those specific files reported as missing in the list?
- What’s going on with those 2 subfolders? Is that where the files are? Anki can’t directly use media in subfolders, but did you have an add-on that used media from there?
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Yep they are reported as missing
It says that the 2 folders are from pokemon_images and pogress_bars, they are from 2 add ons but i never put anything in those folders
Okay, thanks for ruling those things out.
What’s going on with the media on your other device? What’s going on when you look at these notes/cards on AnkiWeb? I’m asking because I checked your account and there hasn’t been any media deleted recently.
[When we’re done finding your files, you should also gives some thought to deleting the 19K unused files in your collection – especially since you have over 5GB of media in your account.
Clarifying to emphasize what @Eltaurus suggested: Don’t try to delete any media yet. This is a task for after you have back what you need and it’s working correctly.]
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It’s a bit of a speculation, but if the OS and/or the filesystems are different, then some characters in the filenames might get encoded differently, which prevents Anki from recognizing the files on the disk and the files referenced on the cards as the same. That would mean that the missing files are still there (so it’s better not to delete unused files in Anki before restoring the references). Can you try and locate any single missing file manually? For that, you’ll need to check how it is written down in a card’s field: should be something like [sound:audio.mp3] for audiofiles, or <img src="image.jpg"> for images (press <>, which appears when the cursor is hovered over the top right corner of the field, to see the full code). Then look for the file in your collection.media folder.
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Srry for taking so long to answer, my power went out for days cause of a storm. This is how my cards look in ankiweb.
So i just checked for the missing media in my files and its not there, theres only media from pre-made decks that i downloaded:(
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I asked earlier, but you didn’t respond – Can you see these images on the cards on your AnkiDroid device? [Consider opening AnkiDroid with your device in airplane mode, to avoid autosyncing – in case that’s the only place these files still exist.]
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Can you give me the filename – as text, please – of one missing file?
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Show us how that file is referenced in the field of your note. You’ll need to click
< >above the field to see the underlying HTML.
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Sorry, didn’t see that message
- Nop i can’t see them in ankidroid either
- paste-417ee2d67d183740b13edfdf31ac189f4c8f2698.jpg
I can see that this file used to be on AnkiWeb, but it was deleted more than 30d ago, so it’s not recoverable. There haven’t been any media files deleted from your AnkiWeb account in the past 30d. Had it been a long time since you used/synced Anki?
If we don’t have it on our server then we can’t restore it for you. So it is time to start hunting for other copies –
- Have you checked on any other devices you’ve used with Anki?
- If you’ve used AnkiDroid on that same device for a few years, there’s one specific place you should check – the “old” storage location that was used pre-2.17 –
/storage/emulated/0/AnkiDroid. You might find an old copy of your collection there.
- If you’ve used AnkiDroid on that same device for a few years, there’s one specific place you should check – the “old” storage location that was used pre-2.17 –
- Have you looked for any backups you made of your
collection.media? - Have you checked specifically in Anki’s
media.trashfolder on all of your devices?- On Windows, that is in your profile folder.
- On Android, you can either plug your device into a computer a browse it like a drive – look for
/storage/emulated/0/Android/data/com.ichi2.anki/files/AnkiDroid. Or you can skip that step and just try restoring everything in the trash – 3-dots menu > Check > Check Media > Restore deleted.
- Have you ever exported and shared your decks? That would include a copy of your media.
- Was any of the media imported with other shared decks?
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I just checked on my tablet and i have my images there!, i have it in airplone mode for now, which folder should i transfer to my pc or what should i do now?
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That depends – where did you find the files on your tablet? Through the app? Current storage location? Old storage location?
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Well i reviewed a card and it had images, im checking this route “This PC\Tab S10 Ultra de Daniel\Internal storage\Android\data\com.ichi2.anki\files\AnkiDroid\collection.media” and i guess they’re all there cause there’s thousands and thousand of files.
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That means that you should have been able to see them just fine back when you checked a few days ago … But okay! Let’s not argue with success.
Since everything looks fine in AnkiDroid, you can directly copy those files to your computer. [Leave your tablet in airplane mode until we get this sorted.]
- Close desktop Anki
- Copy the contents of
collection.mediaon your Android device to thecollection.mediafolder on your computer. It’s a lot of files, so that will take some time – and I’m sure that many will be duplicates, so you’ll have to choose which to keep. [Don’t keep both, because one will be renamed and immediately become useless.] - When that’s done, start desktop Anki in safe mode, to skip syncing – and see if the cards have media again on desktop.
- If that all checks out, go to Preferences > Syncing > Log out – and then click Sync to log in again. That will rescan your media and make sure AnkiWeb gets all of those files back.
- Let me know when that’s done, because I want to check that file again on the server and make sure it is back.
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Well i checked ankidroid on my phone not my tablet, i barely use my tablet so i guess thats why its not sync.
Okay!, i’ll let you know when im done. Thanks!
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Alright, the files are done transferring and I can access them in anki in safe mode, I have a question though, do I need to restart anki out of safe mode to do the syncing part? Cause I tried syncing the way you told me to in safe mode and an error showed up saying to try again and that if the error persists to contact support.