Hi, I downloaded a premade deck, one Tae Kim’s Guide to Japanese. I studied it over 5 years ago, and I’m restarting my studies now. I hit reset ctrl + alt N, and selected both options for position and reps. Now, however, it’s showing me new cards in totally random order, whereas I remember they are to be presented in a particular order (the order they are in when I click “sort field” in the Browser). I tried reseting due date, and they are all the same due date now, but when i try studying it’ll go: card #240, #175, etc. How can I get it to show me new cards according to the order they are in the “sort field”? also, I don’t understand the position numbers, they are crazy high numbers and some of them are totally far apart, if I select all the cards and reposition it tells me “changed position of 0 new cards”. BTW, i have this as a sub, sub deck, and I just want to restart this SUB SUB deck all over again like new.
Anki can only restore the original position numbers if they were preserved (that’s what “if possible” means there). It sounds you studied this before that feature was implemented, so the numbers probably weren’t preserved.
But luckily you have the card numbers as your sort field – that makes this easy to fix. Search up all the New cards in this deck – is:new deck:your::subdeck::name – and sort them by the “Sort Field” column. Select all and Reposition (start 0, step 1, uncheck both boxes).
If that still tells you it impacted 0 cards, or you don’t see the "New #"s change (in the Due column), then something else is wrong.
For the rest of your New cards in your collection, you can fix the ridiculously high New-queue numbers too. First run Tools > Check Database, just in case there are any issues in the New-queue. Search up all New cards that are not in deck you already adjusted – is:new -deck:your::subdeck::name – and sort by the “Due” column. Select all, Reposition them just like above (start 0, step 1, uncheck both boxes), and then run Check Database again to fix the index for the end of the New-card queue.
Hi, just did the reposition, and yes unfortunately, it did 0. I checked the database, and it showed a couple things fixed. Did the search you specified and that brings up nothing. It’d be a pain in the ass, but it’s only 305 cards. Can I somehow manually force it into order?
Also, the positions are like 3245, 2002021, 3145, etc. If I reposition one card, no matter what options I use in reposition it tells me “repositioned 0 new cards”.
- Are the cards still New?
- Are the New-queue numbers already in order when you sort by that column?
- Do you have the right New card gather order and sort order selected in your Deck Options? Because that is what chooses whether to follow the order the cards are numbered in or not.
If you remember what, it might be useful to know, but that’s generally a good outcome.
I’ll ask the obvious question – did you change that search to the actual name of your deck-subdeck path?
Are you sure both boxes are unchecked when you run Reposition?
If it’s none of those things, make sure your collection is synced to AnkiWeb, let me know what deck this is, and I can check it when I’m back online in a bit.
New queue numbers? the only sort fields I have are: answer, card type, card modified, created, deck, difficulty, due, ease, interval, lapses, note modified, note type, question, position, retrievability, reviews, sort field, stability, tags. So I don’t know what column you are referring to. My gather order is deck, and sort order is order gathered.
Sorry, I am just blown away with all the info I’m sifting through to make this thing work and trying to study at the same time, I have no idea what it fixed. I already pushed those changes to anji web one way too.
Yes very carefully changed the search string to exactly match. I even typed a space in is: new, and it informed me of the invalid argument so I fixed it to is:new. When I type deck:blah::blah::blah, yeah, it’s correct but nothing is there.
yes, completely, whether I do one, two, or all the cards, running reposition never does anything.
My deck is:
“deck:Japanese::Tae Kim’s Guide to Japanese Grammar w/ Diagrams::Recognition::2 - Essential Grammar”
Yes, the “New #” shows in the “Due” column for New cards – instead of a due date. That’s its position in the New-queue.
The reason that Reposition isn’t working on those cards is that they aren’t New. In your deck, of the 305 cards, only 1 is (currently) New.
is:new "deck:Japanese::Tae Kim's Guide to Japanese Grammar w/ Diagrams::Recognition::2 - Essential Grammar"
It looks like these cards have no actual review history though. After resetting them (which they didn’t need, since they don’t have any history), did you use “Set Due Date” or do something else to adjust their scheduling?
Well, using is:new and the deck name in quotes actually brought up the one new card, while using Deck:name::name didn’t. a moot detail.
Yes, I’m sure this deck did have a review history, becuase I distinctly remember using it, and when I started using it again recently, it started me off quarter of the way through with the kinds of intervals that only a long gap with previous use could determine.
In any case, When i reset this deck, I also selected all the cards and made their due date today. Was that a mistake? reason i did that was, after the reset, it was random, and now after that due date action they are random in a different way. Not that merely shuffling the deck again was my goal, i thought that, all things being equal, it would devolve on some other parameter to order their retrieval, but I see that is not the case.
It might be moot to you now, but it will keep happening if you don’t understand why. You need the quotes because there are spaces in the deck name. Searching - Anki Manual
I must have missed those particular cards in my clicking-around/sampling, but digging for them, I do now. About 25 of the cards had review history from 2020 and/or 2017.
Reset makes the card New, and zeros the reps and lapses, but it doesn’t erase the review history from before that. It just draws a line and says nothing from before this will be considered.
Whether it was a mistake or not depends on what your goal was – but it does explain what you’re seeing. That converted the cards to the Review state – skipping Learn – but it also means that New-queue/position numbers don’t matter anymore. The cards are being shown based on your Review sort order, which you have set to “Due Date, then Random.”
Rereading what you wrote in your original message –
– that now makes perfect sense.
So, in summary –
- These aren’t New cards, so you can’t Reposition them.
- They are being shown in random order because you told Anki to show you Review cards in random order.
If you want to have them introduced as New and in-order, the instructions I gave you above will work, but the cards have to be New when you do it, so Reset the cards first.
Ok, I thought I had reset them already and I was disappointed when I saw your response, but I just repeated those actions and they worked this time. I reset them, and repositioned them and now it’s fine. I suppose the database check must have cleared something up. Thank you, problem solved.