I accidentally overwrote my collection during a sync and have no local backups left

Anki Syncing & AnkiWeb
1

I got a new pc from work which I made some deck on, I had a lot of decks during my studies which I am still in but due to some sync it overwrote with the like 1 deck I had and everything else I had got deleted. I managed to find like 2-3 of my ol ddecks but I had tons and my girlfriend whomst I love is having the course I have had and I cant even help her now that it over synced and its gone :frowning:

No backups, tried offline on another pc but its still just nothing but the one new deck and such. The account I am using here and signed up with is the same account that I have which I lost it on I am praying for help now :frowning:

2

The best place to recover is from any device where you used the old collection. Even if you accidentally synced it with AnkiWeb, and you accepted the one-way sync that downloaded the wrong collection – you can still restore the automatic backup that was made just before that sync – Restoring an Automatic Backup (Recovering from Data Loss) - Anki FAQs .

You should still be able to restore from your other PC – and if not there, check all of your other Anki devices.

When all of this is done, please note – you can’t merge 2 separate collections through syncing. Syncing with AnkiWeb - Anki Manual

3

Hi Danika,

I have checked and I got nothing and I have no other previous devices nor acces to my old PC. Is there nothing I can do and I am f***ed ? :frowning:

4

  • Was the “another PC” you tried it on a fresh install that had never had your collection before?

  • What about the iPhone that tried to connect to your account as recently as last November? Or any other devices where you used AnkiMobile?

If you haven’t maintained or preserved any copies of your own collection, and the only copy was on AnkiWeb – your options are limited.

The complication here is that your account looks like it’s been inactive for quite some time. It looks like it was probably inactive long enough that the data was removed from our servers, probably in 2024 or 2025. I can usually see the date of the removal, and that’s missing here, but everything else points to a long period of inactivity.

There are 2 server-side backups still in your AnkiWeb account, but I don’t think they will be what you’re looking for.

  • The most recent one is from ~5 days ago, the same day you verified/updated your email address. It looks like that’s the same unused 4 decks you have in your account currently. [Did the mis-sync happen that long ago? Based on what you reported, I assumed you knew for certain that your collection was still on the server, but it seems possible your AnkiWeb collection was already empty when that happened, and it wasn’t overwritten.]

  • The older one is from April 2024, so it’s definitely a lot older than what you’d have on devices you used in 2025. [Just like a local automatic backup, that does not include any media attached to your collection.] If you want me to restore that older version to your AnkiWeb account, please confirm.

Other things you can do right now –

  • Make sure the email address you’re using for your AnkiWeb account is one that you have permanent access to. If you lose touch with that email, you won’t get important emails from us – like notification that your data is pending deletion. And if you can’t re-verify your email address annually, you might not be able to access AnkiWeb at all.

  • If you know you’re going to take a long break from studying, you can create your own COLPKG backup of your collection and store that in a separate place (e.g., another device, a cloud storage account).