Hi! My old phone with AnkiMobile on it broke and I had to get a new one. I now have a new iPhone and installed AnkiMobile (didn’t have any flash card yet of course) and wanted to sync it to AnkiWeb. However, it looks like this move actually deleted all my flash cards on AnkiWeb. I don’t seem to be able to access any backups whatsoever.
Is there any way this can be restored? I seem to have lost a lot of flash cards and a lot of hours now…
I did find the instruction that says I should have used a one-way sync, but only after I already lost my files.
A first-time sync with your account will always be a one-way sync. If you weren’t shown the message to choose which direction, it’s because the app recognized that your local collection was empty and simply downloaded what you had in your AnkiWeb account.
Are you sure this is the right account though? Your account is empty because the data was removed from it in December 2025, 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.
If you still have a local copy of your collection on any device where you used Anki (or AnkiMobile or 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 April 2022. [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 devices, 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 change addresses on the account, make sure your ISP/domain/spam filter allows emails from ankiweb.net, so we will be able to reach you in the future.
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, or cloud storage account). Backups - Anki Manual
Thanks a lot for your elaborate reply. I’m afraid I don’t have a local copy anymore; my old phone broke and its data wasn’t available to me because of that. I would’ve expected the AnkiMobile app to sync automatically with AnkiWeb every now and then. Was I mistaken to assume this?
I do receive all the e-mails warning me about deletion of my decks after a period of inactivity and I always act on them by logging in. I expect that that shouldn’t be the reason for my AnkiWeb having been cleared.
If indeed you’d be able to restore the April ‘22 back-up, that’d be great. At least I’d have some of my decks.
Yes, you were. Unless you open the app and trigger a sync, it doesn’t sync.
Well, that is the reason, so it looks like you missed that most recent one. But if the only contact you’ve had with your account in recent years is re-activating it every 6 months, it’s less surprising that the retained backup is from almost 4 years ago.
I’ve restored that backup to your account. Be sure to download from AnkiWeb on your next sync. Once you have that, you should do something to preserve your collection yourself, so you won’t have to be concerned about keeping it active on AnkiWeb’s servers.
Thank you @Danika_Dakika! That’s a painful learning for me, but a good one nonetheless.
Hmm.. that could be the case. I actually had picked up using Anki again recently though. So am I then correct to assume that, locally, my Anki was still fine, but since I had missed the e-mail reminder somehow, my AnkiWeb back-up got deleted? Just trying to prevent that I make this same mistake in the future
If you started using Anki again, but you weren’t syncing with AnkiWeb, that wouldn’t reactivate your AnkiWeb account. If you were syncing, it must have been with a different account.
