Syncing first time from Anki desktop to Ankiweb on iPhone

New user. I had Ankiweb on my iPhone first. One deck. 4 cards.

I added the Anki app to my Windows laptop.

I wanted to sync with my iPhone. The first time I synced, Anki asked me upload or download from device (or something to that effect). I chose to go from iPhone to Laptop. It added those 4 cards to my new laptop deck.

Then I added several cards to the desktop deck and synced. The app did not ask about upload or download. It just overwrote by desktop deck with the 4 cards from the iPhone. :woman_facepalming:t4:

How do I change the direction of the sync to go from desktop to iPhone?

I searched in the forum and didn’t find this problem. Thank you for your help.
Linda

Yes, initial sync is always forced in one direction. Syncing with AnkiWeb - Anki Manual

Sync won’t be forced in one direction unless there is an irreconcilable conflict. You don’t need to do anything to merge the 2 collections together. Anki will manage that, and it will tell you if that’s not possible – because then you’ll have some decisions to make.

It’s very unlikely that Anki overwrote your info. That would mean that Anki recognized them as identical – same type, same first field, same ID numbers – and you would have already gotten a Duplicate warning for that. Not to mention, Anki wouldn’t overwrite newer info with older info.

Respectfully, a more likely explanation is that when you created those Notes [you enter Notes, Anki makes as many Cards as you want from each of them – Getting Started - Anki Manual], their Cards didn’t go into the decks you thought they did. They aren’t gone, they just wandered off. :wink:

If your whole collection is just 8 cards now, go to the Browse window, empty out the search bar, and press Enter –
image
I expect you’ll see everything there – and just have some rearranging to do (look for “Change Deck” in the manual).

If I’m wrong, and Anki has gone rogue, it’s a great time for you to get familiar with the backup system – Restoring an Automatic Backup (Recovering from Data Loss) - Frequently Asked Questions. You can likely restore anything that was lost.

Yes! I see them in the search! :partying_face: Okay. I’ll read in the manual how to put them in a deck. Thank you!

I was concerned about repeating the same error.

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