Hi, it seems like many people have had this issue, but I am writing to see if it might be possible to restore my old cards and decks.
I was inactive on inactive for over 6 months. During this time my laptop got stolen, where I had the cards backed up on a hard drive. Therefore, I currently do not have any of my old cards which was about three years of reviews. I can’t remember exactly how many cards I had but I think it was upwards of 30,000. My last activity was around August 2024.
Earlier in 2024 ankiforums helped me tremendously when if I accidentally deleted around 7000 files of media content, I’m not sure if there is data stored from that incident.
Thank you so much in advance for anyone who might be able to help me restore these, it seems like other posts that there might be data on the server, but I’m not sure. Even any early restoration such as from September 2021 onwards would be so helpful. Thank you in advance for reading this!
From similar cases in the past, I suspect there’s not much hope for this situation.
But looking at the issue more broadly, maybe there could be some rethink of Anki’s data storage philosophy, as part of the current transition.
Apple and Microsoft and Google all have clouds. Most apps on Apple, for example, store their data on Apple’s internal cloud in a way that’s completely transparent to the end user. Microsoft’s OneDrive could perhaps be used in some similar way.
Maybe a paid tier that guarantees data retention, or allowing users to arrange storage of their data on their device-appropriate cloud rather than Anki’s. Or maybe archive inactive accounts to something like Amazon’s Glacier storage, which costs about 2.3 cents per gigabyte per month, which would might allow inactive accounts to be retained for more than 6 months, perhaps with a modest retrieve-and-restore fee being charged to cover costs and also to subsidize a few years of storage of the accounts that do end up being truly abandoned and ultimately deleted.
Please don’t. It is one of the new evils on the internet to retain user data and let them access it for a fee only.
Maybe Anki could occasionally show a reminder that AnkiWeb serves as a service for synchronisation but is not intended as a long-term backup storage when the application isn’t used anymore and that other backup possibilities (external storage, online services) should be utilised.
I’m looking at the account connected to the email address you used to post here. The data was removed from this account in November 2025. But this account has no history of syncing with a laptop – only with AnkiMobile on iOS. You should still have a local copy of your collection on any device where you used Anki/AnkiMobile/AnkiDroid, so you can upload that 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 April 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.
Other things you can do right now –
Make sure the email address you’re using for your AnkiWeb account is one that you have permanent access to. If you lose touch with that email, you won’t get important emails from us – like notification that your data is pending deletion. And if you can’t re-verify your email address annually, you might not be able to access AnkiWeb at all.
If you know you’re going to take a long break from studying, you can create your own COLPKG backup of your collection and store that in a separate place (e.g., another device, a cloud storage account).
Those companies store user data for free because they have other ways of monetizing their users. That’s not a model Anki should be pursuing, is it?
A reminder wouldn’t help inactive users. Besides, they already get a notification email after 5 months of inactivity, warning them that their data will be deleted in a month.