I am writing regarding my AnkiWeb account and the deletion of my synchronized decks due to inactivity.
I recently discovered that all of my data was deleted from my account after receiving an inactivity notice email. Unfortunately, I did not see this email in time. I have been using my account for several years and it contained more than 10,000 cards that represent a significant amount of work.
I understand that storage policies are necessary for a free service, but I was very surprised that such a large amount of data could be permanently deleted after a single warning
email. Because of this, I wanted to ask if there is any possibility that my data may still exist in a backup or archive on your servers.
If there is any way to restore my decks or recover even part of the data, I would be extremely grateful.
Yes, the data was removed from your AnkiWeb account in February, after your account had been inactive for at least 6 months. We delete the data from accounts in our system that aren’t being used for syncing or studying, so AnkiWeb isn’t suitable for long-term storage of your inactive collection – AnkiWeb account removal - Anki FAQs.
However that policy only affects the data on our servers. If you still have a local copy of your collection on any of the devices where you used Anki / AnkiMobile / AnkiDroid), you can upload your collection to AnkiWeb and resume syncing.
Generally when data is removed from an account, that includes the server-side backups. However there is one that was retained in your account – from June 2025. [Just like a local automatic backup, that does not include any media attached to your collection.] I expect that version of your collection is older than whatever you have on your device(s), but if you want me to restore it to your AnkiWeb account, please confirm.
Thank you for your reply and for checking my account.
Yes, please go ahead and restore the backup from June 2025 to my AnkiWeb account. I understand that this backup may not include media files and may be older than the collection that was previously on my devices.
I would still like to have the backup restored so I can access the collection again and resume syncing with Anki.
Thank you for your help and for locating the June 2025 backup of my collection.
Before restoring it, I wanted to ask if there is any possibility that media files might still exist on the server or in any older backups. Most of my cards were created using image occlusion in Anki, so they rely heavily on the associated images to function properly.
Unfortunately, I no longer have any locally stored copies of my collection on my devices, so recovering the media would be very important for me if it is at all possible.
I understand that the backup you mentioned may not include media, but I wanted to check if there is any chance that the media files could still be recovered from another backup or location.
If not, I would still greatly appreciate restoring the June 2025 backup of my collection.