How can I import a packaged deck a second time? Not to update, but keep two copies of each card

[Saeidno]

Tldr: I want to have two copies of the same packaged deck. Or rather, I want both the updated version and the old version. They’re not identical, but importing the old one blocks importing cards of the other. How can I keep both?

My example: I have imported and studied a deck from Eyeguru BCSC. Now I want the “same deck” as updated by someone else: Blue’s Eyeguru BCSC. This new deck contains further info inside each card; but no new cards. I can import the set completely if I make a new profile. But if I import the set to my original profile, which contains the original cards, I get the deck containing only get few card: only those which I had completely deleted from the original Eyeguru set. “pre-excisting” cards are not imported. I explicitly do not want any updates to the cards. I want the old cards unchanged (I have made my own changed, I need to keep those). I want the second deck (Blue’s Eyeguru BCSC) to be imported, as if it were being imported to an empty Anki profile. Would that be possible?

[Danika_Dakika]

In the long run, since you don’t need to study 2 different versions of the same card, you would be better off merging the updates together into one deck.

If you want them to simply co-exist side-by-side, the easiest way is to make the 2nd one incompatible with “updating.” There are a few ways to do it.

Start by importing the “Blue’s” deck into a separate profile. The manual details some of the things that you cannot do if you want to be able to import a deck later as an update – so any of those should work – Packaged Decks - Anki Manual OR Text Files - Anki Manual. Then export the deck from that separate profile, and you should be able to import it into yours. In the most current versions, there are also options to treat the imported notes “duplicates” whenever possible, so pick that as well.