I want to migrate from Studies app, (another flashcard app). In this app, you can export to Anki format easily with apkg extension. After importing a deck to Anki desktop on Mac, everything looks fine on the Anki browser tab with all images attached and visible plus the text as well. But when reviewing the deck, no image and no text is shown during the review. On all card there is the “The front of this card is blank” message.
Anyone can help me on this please? Thank you very much!
leclercfrank
Mac mini M1, 2020
Mac OS Ventura 13.6.6
Anki Version 25.02
Welcome! [While I’m not familiar with the “Studies” app, I’m a bit leery of any app that claims to export an APKG – since that’s not an easy task. But if it looks like everything imported, we can set that aside for now.]
Your issue sounds like a mismatch between what fields on your notes have information in them, and what fields are displayed on your cards. Did you import your notes into one of the default note types, or a custom note type? Getting Started - Anki Manual
In Anki, they are Basic notes, but depending on how many facets each note has, they are labeled Basic_2_fields, Basic_3_fields, Basic_4_fields, and so on until 13 fields because some cards have that many fields. I tried to change the note type and it’s not helping me either. But anyway I also tested to import 2 simple field notes without images and it’s the same, nothing is displayed during the review. Here are some screenshots for you that maybe could help.
Let me know if you think about anything else, and thank you!
leclercfrank
Okay, I think I’m starting to get it. 13 separate note types, based on how many fields the note has? But because they are all “Basic” – each note type only makes one card? (That’s the conventional meaning of “Basic” in Anki – but if that’s coming from your other app, it might mean something different?) Or are they supposed to make more cards than that?
I think since you will have to make changes to the templates, it will be easier to do that on a single note type than 13 of them – so we should figure out how to get all these narrowed down to one note type. It can have as many fields as you want, because the unnecessary ones for any given note can be empty.
But I don’t understand what the “Facet 3” and “Facet 4” fields represent on the sample note you posted. If you want “Front” on the front of the card and “Back” on the back of the card – how are those other fields incorporated into your card?
This is the problem – Template:Front doesn’t make a card template in Anki. It’s just a string of meaningless text. So if that is what “Studies” is exporting and claiming it’s an APKG – I circle back to my earlier doubt that they know how to do that!
If you can explain what your cards are supposed to look like, we might be able to help you produce that in Anki.
I will try to be as precise as I can be. In Studies app, cards have 2 sides. The front side is called Question and the back side is called Answer. When you edit a card, you edit the front side (Question), and then the back side (Answer), but if you need you can add any side as you want (sides are called facets in Studies app). So in Anki, where it’s written Basic_13_fields, it’s a card with 13 sides in total. So back in Studies app, when you review your card, you first see the front side, then you can reveal each other side (facets) one by one by the pressing of right arrow. By the way, just to help you understand my workflow, I use flashcards to study snapshots of video tutorials to help me retain the best part of them, so that’s why I need to have that many sides on each card.
Back to Anki. Now, I have made a little progress on exporting from Studies to Anki. I don’t know why that has changed, but I can now review cards as they should be, with the question and answer plus images displayed even on Review mode. But the sad news is that I can just see the first 2 sides of each card, other sides are not shown in Anki for now but they exist.
I’m not totally sure I understand the “facets” aspect of this (the front is the question for the answer on the back – is the back then the question for Facet 3, and Facet 3 is the question for Facet 4? Or is the front the question for all of the backs? Or is it really question-front, answer-back, and then Facets 3-13 are just extra information?) – but it’s possible that won’t matter.
I think a good place for you to start is to understand the relationship between notes and cards in Anki. Even though folks sometimes talk about having a “3-sided” card – that really means 3 separate cards, each with a front and a back. You can choose to make as many cards as you want from your notes, but you’ll have to decide what goes on the front and what goes on the back.
The most important reason for adhering to that is you have to be able to grade your answer so the card can be scheduled appropriately – and you can’t give one grade to a series of a dozen question/answer pairs.
You’ll have a better idea than anyone else how to fit your imported information into that framework.
[Not for nothing, but you might want to tell “Studies” to stop claiming they can export an APKG, since they don’t understand what needs to be included in the card templates they are creating.]
Based on what they said, it seems that you see Facet 1, Facet 2, Facet 3 and so on until Facet 13 and the rating is to be done based on how they felt they were able to remember the details. I guess a JS workaround could me made for what they want. I’d be happy to help, but you’ll have to wait 2 weeks as my exams are there in a week. Incase this delay is too much, ask if somebody else can help you with this.
If this was the correct understanding, could you (@leclercfrank) also tell how you wish to go to the next facet from one facet (like clicking a button, clicking the image or something)?
