Hi so most of my cards have been replaced and no longer in my collection:(. this happened when i imported my friends deck into mine and didnt realise that his cards replaced some of mine. can someone please tell me why this happened? the last manual backup was at the end of october and my anki is synced so i dont know what to do. the best bet is to retrieve my cards from the day before i uploaded his deck from a backup that happened a day before i imported his decks right? but backups automatically made wont include images so ill have to put all images on manually. can anyone please guide me on what i can do please? thankyou
What about: Restoring an Automatic Backup (Recovering from Data Loss) - Anki FAQs
edit: should had clarified better, missed the mention of auto backups
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This shouldn’t be an issue. The cards just reference the media files and don’t actually include it. Overwriting your deck won’t delete unused media, which means that everything should be up and running once you did what NameLessGO told you above.
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^^^ Automatic backup is the way to go. Anki probably made a fresh one just before you imported that COLPKG, so you can restore exactly where you were before.
Please scold your friend for exporting their collection for you that way – they should have chosen APKG and exported without scheduling information to give a deck to someone else.
In the future, make sure you read the boxes that pop up. They say really important things like –
This will delete your existing collection and replace it with the data in the file you’re importing. Are you sure?
Probably not something you want to just click through! 
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Oh okay so does that mean If i restore it an automatic backup that happened just before i imported my media files will be present but just not visible? and does that include voice memos too? thankyou for replying!
I told them about it! the issue is before i imported his deck there was no forewarning whatsoever which Is why i noticed it a week later 
They are in a collection.media folder. Anki cards essentially always look in that folder for media (asuming local files, not files stored on a webserver) and try to find a picture / audio file with a certain name. If anki finds that, anki will show it to you during review. Else you’ll get a “missing image” icon. For more info, see this:
(so, yes. They aren’t visible in anki if no card references the file. But you can always see them with your file manager.)
Yes (see link above).
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That’s very odd though. Can you go to help > about > copy debug info and paste the info here please?
yes ofcourse: Anki 24.06.3 (d678e393) (ao)
Python 3.9.18 Qt 6.6.2 PyQt 6.6.1
Platform: Windows-10-10.0.22631
===Add-ons (active)===
(add-on provided name [Add-on folder, installed at, version, is config changed])
Add Table [‘1237621971’, 2023-06-18T12:37, ‘None’, mod]
Countdown To Events and Exams [‘1143540799’, 2022-06-27T12:50, ‘None’, ‘’]
Custom Background Image and Gear Icon [‘1210908941’, 2023-04-19T02:19, ‘None’, mod]
Edit Field During Review Cloze [‘385888438’, 2024-11-16T10:23, ‘6.21’, mod]
Image Occlusion Enhanced [‘1374772155’, 2022-04-09T08:15, ‘None’, ‘’]
Review Heatmap [‘1771074083’, 2022-06-30T02:43, ‘None’, ‘’]
===IDs of active AnkiWeb add-ons===
1143540799 1210908941 1237621971 1374772155 1771074083 385888438
===Add-ons (inactive)===
(add-on provided name [Add-on folder, installed at, version, is config changed])
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Ah okay thank you so much!
Ive also noticed that image occlusion enhanced hasnt been working for me for a while, but image occlusion + has, it happened after I tried to edit a flashcard from a cloze back to a basic but it caused my anki to crash and since then image occlusion enhanced stop working 
The Image Occlusion Enhanced note type is used by the add-on of the same name. Do you have that add-on installed? If it’s not working for you, the fastest fix is to disable and delete it, and reinstall it fresh.
The Image Occlusion+ note type is likely one that you imported with a shared deck. It is probably the same as the default Image Occlusion note type that you already have – which is used by Anki’s built-in Image Occlusion functionality. Because there might be some differences, Anki protects your own note type by making the name of the imported one unique.
But if that imported note type isn’t working, then you should change your notes to use the default one and delete the broken one. For more about consolidating duplicate note types, see Removing duplicate note types - Anki FAQs .
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thankyou I will have a look into that. Before I proceed with restoring to my old backup is there anything else you would say I need to do just in case? many thanks!
No, nothing else. If you’re nervous, make a fresh backup right now, so at least you can get back here if you need to – File > Create Backup.
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To avoid similar things occurring in the future, ensure that each of your cards has a unique identifier. If this is the case, then no other card can overwrite them.
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