I’m currently importing a lot of word lists on Anki and every time I do it, Anki automatically updates some of my cards and corrects duplicates. it’s especially annoying when the duplicates are coming from different decks in different languages.
for example :
on my Spanish deck, I have a card with Money on the front and Dinero on the back (which is Spanish for Money).
if I import a word that also means Money but in French this time, and even if I do it in another deck (my French deck), Anki will change the back of the card in my Spanish deck to Argent (which is French for Money). of course, it makes a total mess.
I’m not sure but maybe Anki is also updating cards when the front (or the back) of two decks are very similar.
to keep it simple, I would like Anki to stop updating anything on my list. would you please tell me how I do that ?
When importing text files, Anki uses the first field to determine if a note is unique. By default, if the file you are importing has a first field that matches one of the existing notes in your collection and that existing note is the same type as the type you’re importing, the existing note’s other fields will be updated based on content of the imported file. A drop-down box in the import screen allows you to change this behaviour, to either ignore duplicates completely, or import them as new notes instead of updating existing ones.
The ‘match scope’ setting controls how duplicates are identified. When ‘notetype’ is selected, Anki will identify a duplicate if another note with the same notetype has the same first field. When set to ‘notetype and deck’, a duplicate will only be flagged if the existing note also happens to be in the deck you are importing into.
If you have updating turned on and older versions of the notes you’re importing are already in your collection, they will be updated in place (in their current decks) rather than being moved to the deck you have set in the import dialog. If notes are updated in place, the existing scheduling information on all their cards will be preserved.
Or read the import prompts.
Match scope
Only existing notes with the same notetype will be checked for duplicates. This can additionally be restricted to notes with cards in the same deck.
Existing notes
What to do if an imported note matches an existing one.
Update: Update the existing note.
<U+2068>Preserve<U+2069>: Do nothing.
<U+2068>Duplicate<U+2069>: Create a new note.
Perhaps the simplest solution is to add a unique identifier to the record type. Keep in mind that such a field should be placed first. An addon can help with this: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/8897764