Hi, my friend has already posted on here — i logged into my account on my friends anki desktop app so i could import a deck, but when I logged in, it overrode all of my decks with my friends decks. I logged into anki on my iPad and phone too and it had my friends decks instead of mine. I have tried to do a backup, but it doesn’t show any backups that aren’t from today.
Please can you do a server backup and retrieve my original anki decks? I am not signed in any other devices and the most recent backups previous to 15th May is fine, I just need my original ankiweb decks back please!!
(Made a post here also as I thought you may need my email linked to my Ankiweb . Please can you do the backup as soon as you see this as I have one more day until my exam 
) Thank you
My friend, who solely uses Ankiweb for her flashcards on her iPad, has lost them all while trying to log into my Anki app on my laptop. She was logging into my app to import a deck from my own collection (as she couldn’t on Ankiweb). In the process, there has been a syncing issue and now all of her decks on her Ankiweb are showing up as mine.
Her decks have virtually all been replaced by mine and my profiles. I have checked my backups etc and there is nowhere to see her decks. Is there any way her original Ankiweb decks can be found and recovered? Were they stored anywhere apart from on her Ankiweb website?
It sounds like you logged in to sync in your friend’s profile, and on the one-way sync, you choose the wrong direction.
It sounds like after you had that mis-sync, you then accepted it and downloaded that same collection on your devices.
If you had already been using an installed version of Anki on any of those devices, this isn’t as dire as your friend made it sound. You can recover your collection from the last backup before the wrong-way sync. On desktop – File > Revert to Backup – on iOS – ⚙️ Preferences > Backups. So were those devices you were already syncing with? Or did you use them for the first time today?
I was already using Anki web on both my iPad and phone before today. My decks were on these devices before this happened, but after the sync they were replaced by my friends. I checked my backups but I can only see backups from today after the issue happened.
Do you mean the AnkiWeb website interface – https://ankiweb.net/decks – that you access though your browser? Or one of the apps – Anki - powerful, intelligent flashcards – installed on your device? You’re talking about backups – so it seems like you must be talking about an app? And I can see that your account has synced with multiple apps.
Yes i have been using the Anki website interface. I only downloaded the app today, to see if i could resolve the issue. But i have always been using the website version on my iPad and iPhone
Okay. The apps only make backups while you’re using them, so you wouldn’t have any backups of your collection before that.
If you’re only using the website, that’s the only version of your collection. Wherever you view the site, whatever apps you sync with it, you’ll always get the same version.
The only option left then is restoring a server-side backup in your account. The last two server backups for this account were made this week (possibly today, depending on where you are in the world) – click for timestamp in your local time zone – and last week – click for timestamp in your local time zone. I don’t know whether that most recent one was made before or after you overwrote your collection, so you’ll have to tell me. If you want me to restore one of those into your account, please confirm, and tell me which one.
Hi, please restore the one from last week. Thank you so much
Okay, that’s restored. Any internet browser where you log in to AnkiWeb will show you that collection. If you sync a device with that collection, make sure you download from AnkiWeb on the next sync.
Once you have your collection back, you’ll need to clean up from your friend’s collection. On any of the apps, you can run Check Media > Delete Unused Media, and then sync with AnkiWeb again to make sure the deleted files are removed from your account. [If you only use AnkiWeb, that won’t be possible.]
To do what (I think) you originally were trying to do –
- Whenever you use someone else’s Anki install, you need to make sure to create your own separate profile first.
- Sync that empty profile with your AnkiWeb account and download from AnkiWeb.
- Once you have your complete collection, you can import the APKG of the deck you want to add.
- Sync again so your AnkiWeb account has that update to your collection. If it’s a large deck/a lot of media, you may need to sync several times.
- When you’re done, you should log out of AnkiWeb in that profile, and you can even delete that profile, so there’s no possibility of a mis-sync later on.