Switch button: Cards vs Notes (on the Browse UI)

Anki Desktop
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Hello @dae ,

Regarding the above mentioned button that enable to switch between Cards and Notes, what is the best way to use/leverage this button? Both options (Cards or Notes) seem to display the exact same list of Cards or Notes on the Browse UI except for the fact that different columns are displayed.

I guess the root cause of my question is the fact that I do not fully understand the difference between a Card and a Note. From the Decks screen, when I click on the button “Add”, I think I am adding “Cards”, right?

Thank you very much.

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A note can have multiple cards. But if all your notes have only one card, then you won’t see any difference.

Try making a note of type “Basic (and reversed card)”, and you’ll see that it creates two cards.

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When you click “Add”, you are creating a note. A note has fields and cards.

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Thank you sprvlcn!

I do not know how to create a (parent) Note with multiple (child) Cards. Do you have a screen recording showing how to do it?

Thank you.

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I don’t have a recording, maybe someone else does.

But you could click on the Add button, and then for Type you could choose “Basic (and reversed card)”. Then click on the Cards… button.

In the Cards screen, you can see Card Type is a drop down menu with two cards defined:
Card 1: Front → Back
Card 2: Back → Front

That’s the simplest example of a note with more than one card.

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I guess the root cause of my question is the fact that I do not fully understand the difference between a Card and a Note.

https://docs.ankiweb.net/getting-started.html#key-concepts

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So for example, if you’re studying German, the Front field could be “Apple” and the Back field could be “Apfel”. So one card would be used for: “What does Apfel mean in English?” and the other would be used for: “What is the German word for Apple?”.

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For Type, I do not have “Basic (and reversed card)”, I think I may have deleted this Type a while back. However I have a Basic Card Type which I have chosen to create a dummy test card:

But in the Cards screen, I can see Card Type is a drop down menu with only 1 card defined:
Card 1: Front → Back

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Click on Options (right of card type) to add more cards.

Please see the manual, it is time worth spend when using Anki.

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I thought there was some kind of 1-n relationship between a parent Note and a child Card but… or… I thought that Note would be some kind of container where I could store n Cards.

But from I am reading on the Anki documentation, this seems like a specific solution for language learning where you can have Q1= Hello A1=Bonjour and the reverse card where you have Q2=Bonjour and its A2=Hello.

I understand better now.

In my case (preparing for an IT Certification), I am not sure how I can use this feature yet.
Thank you.

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Yes, a note can have N cards, any number of them.

The “Basic” note type has only one card. It is a note type that is predefined by Anki.

There are two other predefined note types:

  • “Basic (and reversed card)”, which has two cards
  • “Basic (optional reversed card)”, which can have one or two cards

You can add new cards to an existing note type, or you can clone an existing note type under a different name and then modify it to add more cards, or just invent your own note type from scratch with fields and cards defined as you wish.

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