No new cards shown?

[einlinski]

Hi there,

I’m confused about Anki’s behavior and would appreciate some help.

For several days now, the number of new cards in my deck has stayed exactly the same (1826 new cards). It never shows new cards. I study every day and have already increased all limits for new cards and reviews to 9999.I also use FSRS.

I use Anki on multiple devices and sync regularly.

Thank you!

[Danika_Dakika]

The first thing I notice in your screenshots (aside from the warnings about your re/learning steps), is that your “Maximum reviews/day” is set to 9999 – but only for “This deck.” That doesn’t control the other 113 decks that use this preset. If any of those are parent-/subdecks, the limits interact.

@einlinski

It never shows new cards. I study every day

My next question would be – what are you being given to study instead in this deck? Do you have due Review cards, and are they being shown? What about cards in Learn/Relearn?

Based on your Options, you should see any short-interval Learn/Relearn cards first, then New cards, then interday Learn/Relearn cards mixed with Review cards. Is something different than that happening?

[einlinski]

Hello, thank you very much for your answer! I’ve changed the settings but unfortunately the problem remains the same, I’ve only seeing cards I already learned (and either put in good (10 min) or hard (6 min), no new cards and no matter how long I do this for, it stays the same. I don’t want to only study these 176 cards, because it gets so repetitive.

Thank you in advance!

[Danika_Dakika]

@einlinski

cards I already learned (and either put in good (10 min) or hard (6 min)
…
I don’t want to only study these 176 cards

Do you have 176 cards in Learn/Relearn on short steps? As I said above, those will come first. They are the highest priority, and Anki will show them as close to the end of their step delay as possible. If they are overdue, they will be shown first. The “problem” you are having is that Anki is doing exactly what you’ve told it to do.

Things to think about –

• It’s hard to deal with that much of a backlog in Learn/Relearn, because instead of coming back in 6m or 10m, those cards have to get in line behind the other 175 Learn/Relearn cards that are already waiting. By the time you get back to them, they are overdue, and you still don’t know them, so they are stuck in a cycle.
• There’s no point in introducing more New cards that will immediately become Learn cards and get caught in that same backlog cycle.

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I recommend you set your New cards to 0 until you can graduate all of those Learn/Relearn cards to Review.

To deal with that backlog, you can use a Filtered deck as a “holding pen” and leave behind only as many cards as you can handle today. That you’re using multi-day steps, which aren’t recommended with FSRS, will be an extra complication here – but I think you’ll just have to bite the bullet and work through them with the others.

Try a search like is:learn is:due – limit 160 – order by “latest added first.” [Speak up if that search isn’t giving you good results, or if you need more detailed instructions after reading the page I linked to.] That will leave behind the 16 oldest cards in your main deck to study today, along with today’s due Review cards. Do you think you can graduate that many in one day? Then tomorrow, reduce the limit by 15 and Rebuild the deck to kick out a new batch.

When you get to 0, you don’t need the Filtered deck anymore, and you can set a reasonable daily New card limit.

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To avoid Learn/Relearn cards being caught in this cycle in the future –

• Study all of your due cards every day – no backlogs, no long re/learning steps to carry cards over to the next day.
• Don’t introduce New cards at a faster pace that you can keep up with the reviews on. [Expect that your daily workload will be 8-10x your daily New card limit.]
• Make sure that when you get a card wrong, you’re doing whatever you need to have a better chance of getting it right the next time you see it. You need to actually learn/relearn the cards, so if you just click Again and hope for the best, you’re skipping a step.