I made new notes on my laptop then I did my daily flashcards on my phone.
I forgot to sync so now my phone has my learning progress for today and my laptop has today’s new flashcards.
I tried importing all my decks as a .apkg from my phone to my laptop and from my laptop to my phone but both times it says there’s a note that can’t be imported.
Is there any way anki can tell me which note that was so I can manually reintroduce it to my collection? I have ~600 notes so doing it manually’s not very feasible. I tried scrolling through the little table it shows you and I couldn’t find it either (maybe it was marked as skipped?)
Am I missing something from your description? Is there some reason you can’t just
sync on your laptop,
sync on your phone and
sync on your laptop again?
The result should be that after step 2), the new cards will appear on your phone and after step 3) your learning progress done on your phone will be on your laptop and both devices’ collection data will match.
Unless I’m missing something, you can just cross-sync as normal (being logged into Ankiweb on both devices) and you will not lose either your progress, nor your new cards.
The synchronization process is designed such that it’s not an entirely one-way sync each time.
I’ve tried doing this previously but syncing using either my phone or laptop prompts me to either overwrite my collection on ankiweb or on the device.
Because of this when I tried syncing using a second device, it couldn’t just keep the new cards or the new progress - I can only overwrite the collection with whatever’s on ankiweb.
Maybe it’s because I slightly modified some cards on my phone while answering them? Or maybe I’m not syncing it ‘properly’ somehow? Either way, this is why I was hoping to resort to use importing/exporting decks instead which worked as expected besides that one note not being imported.
When I trying to sync, anki prompts me to overwrite my collection on ankiweb or my device. So after overwriting ankiweb with my laptop or phone, I can’t sync it to my second device unless I overwrite its collection as well.
I did slightly modify some cards when answering them on my phone, so that may be the reason why it’s like that.
Yes, if you’ve gotten your devices into conflict, you’ll have fix it manually. But instead of using export/import to transport your collection from one device to another, it’s easier to fix it in one place, like this – Syncing with AnkiWeb - Anki Manual . That might be enough to overcome your issue, since the export and import will be on the same device.
If not, there are a couple other things you can do from that Overview screen –
In the “Details” section, all 599 of those notes are listed, in the order of that summary – you should see 26 Added, 571 Skipped, 1 Updated, and then at the bottom the 1 that was Skipped. You can see which one it was, and hover over it to see the reason why.
If it was more than 1 [since this might be helpful for someone else] and you wanted to get a closer look at them – each of those “Show” buttons in the top section will open the Browse window displaying those notes. You can select them, tag them (something unique, but whatever you want), and repeat that for the other 2 categories. Then whatever didn’t get tagged are the notes in your collection that came into conflict.
To prevent this in the future – sync when you open the app, and when you close/leave the app, on every device, every time. If you never have different versions of your collection on different devices at the same time, you’ll avoid conflicts like this.
Thank you so much for the reply. Being able to see the one note that wasn’t updated gave me peace of mind. Also fixing the conflict in the way you suggested really was more convenient than whatever I was doing last night. Now I can just manually edit that one note.
I really think it would be helpful if there was a Show button for the notes that couldn’t be imported as well, or at least a report breaking down the reasons notes couldn’t be imported and how many were associated with each reason. Or maybe they could change the status in the report to (Not updated) instead of skipped? I don’t know
I’m usually on top of syncing my devices but I guess I didn’t notice last night that, after making new flashcards on my laptop and syncing it to ankiweb, I ended up syncing my phone by uploading to the web again. I only noticed something was wrong when I checked my statistics after doing my daily cards.
Thank you again for your help!! I hope you have Dan-kicking-tastic day.
It’s an interesting idea, but there really can’t be. The note that didn’t get imported doesn’t exist in your collection, so Anki can’t “Show” it to you in Browse.
That’s exactly what this post-import report is though, right?
“Not updated” might describe a corresponding note in your collection, but the one in the file you imported is listed in the report – and that one was “Skipped.”
It’s an interesting idea, but there really can’t be. The note that didn’t get imported doesn’t exist in your collection, so Anki can’t “Show” it to you in Browse.
Yeah, I guess that does make sense
That’s exactly what this post-import report is though, right?
Yup. What I meant though was that -as an alternative to having a ‘show’ button- maybe when you hover over the “X notes could not be imported” line of the overview it could give you a tool tip that says something like…
-Assuming 10 notes could not be imported-
3 notes could not be imported because … merge notetype… blabla
4 notes could not be imported due to… blablabla
3 notes … some other reason
So that if you wanted to, you could work on resolving the issues if you wanted to without having to manually inspect all their entries in the table
“Not updated” might describe a corresponding note in your collection, but the one in the file you imported is listed in the report – and that one was “Skipped.”
I realized that thanks to your reply. I still think it would be better if they changed it though! It’d help differentiate between notes skipped due to already existing in the collection/deck and notes that couldn’t be imported. Again, I think it’d help with inspecting the notes so you could resolve whatever problems they have.
Really though, I thought of this as more of a third suggestion in case the previous two suggestions weren’t feasible. Just slinging ideas around, y’know? haha
