If a duplicate is found in the new cards, I would like an option to automatically delete whatever card was previously there and is entirely replaced by the new card.
Currently we have
Preserve - the opposite of what I want, the old card stays and the new one is ejected
Update - puts the new card’s fields on the old card while keeping all the metadata for the old card (creation date, deck name, how many reviews it has had, and it does not update fields that are blank on the new card)
Duplicate - closest to what I want but I have to delete the old cards manually
I.e. TL vocabulary: Old card has a word and a crappy incorrect sentence (and a long history of “agains”" - I can’t remember it because it is so bad)
New card has the same word but a much better example (fresh start)
Since what you’re importing are notes, not cards, I doubt there would be any way to do that. Notes don’t have access to card-by-card review history. Even if there were a way to trigger this, you’d still have to choose on a note-by-note basis which ones should be overwritten, so I don’t think this would save you much time or effort.
Other options –
Rather than importing a new note, fix the existing note.
Stop studying (and delete or suspend) notes that you realize are incorrect, so they never get to this point.
Import these new notes and allow them to be created as duplicates. After import, run Find Duplicates, so you can go through and eliminate the ones you know you don’t need.
Yes there is. “Preserve“ does the exact opposite of what I want (deletes any and all new cards and keeps the old ones). So is there any way to just invert the list of duplicates it finds?
Let’s say for example - I have a vocab deck A with example sentences (audio: a person sitting at a microphone and reading it out loud). This obviously gets boring after a while and it’s not real listening practice.
I then make another vocab deck B with Subs2SRS and it gets me a couple hundred cards with screenshots/audio from the movie/TV show in nice chronological order. These are much more interesting and more immersive.
Update: The screenshot, audio clip and subtitle line go into vocab deck A, breaking the nice chronological setup from the other movie cards and making it seem like I’ve known the sentence on it for a long time. Other details relevant only to the original card remain on the card.
Preserve: none of the duplicate cards from the movie are added and the boring deck A cards remain.
I currently use the duplicate method. It just takes time.
It sounds like you don’t want to just delete and re-make/re-place some of the notes, you want to delete and replace all of the notes? I’m not sure that will be a feature with widespread appeal, but I appreciate you explaining in more detail.
It doesn’t delete anything, it just doesn’t make any changes to the existing note. It’s not quite the same.
Have you ever thought of exporting the deck out to a spreadsheet (I recommend LibreOffice Calc, which is free.)?
You may well be able to do a VLOOKUP(), etc., and pull in the updated cards you want. Then reimport the export; it will only update those cards that have changed based on the first column being used as the index.
Secondly, if this works, then use a unique ID for the first column that does not every get displayed. I do that and it really allows you to do much more with the deck.