Hi, I’ve got over 3500 cards to review in a single deck and have been trying to review them but the sheer amount not going down is slightly off putting. I’ve had a quick google search and found I could create a filtered deck? But I’m slightly worried about the data from the decks being wiped and am unsure about what rebuilding does or what I have to do every day?
Is there an easier/ better alternative and how would I best do this?
Thanks in advance!
Filtered deck is a great way how to tackle a backlog!
The only thing it does is it pulls some cards from your deck, you go through them, and then it puts them back.
Easy visualization of a filtered deck: Imagine you have a pile of paper flash cards written on differently colored paper and you only want to review those on blue paper - you pull those out (=make a filtered deck), review them and put them back. No wiping involved, you can press the rebuilt however many times you want, it just reads the criteria you have inputted in the Search bar of the Filtered deck options and make a deck based of that. And when you click Empty, it sends them back to the deck they originally came from. 
Also, depending on your choice in the options of the filtered deck, you can either go though those cards and instruct Anki not to record any progress on those cards (some people use this to cram before exam when they for example started Ankiing their notes late and can’t wait for the algorithm), or you can tick an option called “Reschedule cards based on my answers in this deck” and when you hit Rebuild or Empty, Anki will update those cards’ scheduling info when putting them back.
If you still have cards coming up every day, the easiest way is to make at least one filtered deck for the due today ones:
Options for filtered deck DUE TODAY DO FIRST:
-
Search bar: is:due -is:buried prop:due>=-1
(++If you have multiple decks, you can specify which deck it should pull cards from by adding “deck:NameOfYourDeck” (including the " " symbols!)) -
Limit: 9999 cards selected by Random
-
Reschedule cards based on my answers in this deck - you want this checked!
After doing your due today deck, you can either slowly chip away at the main deck backlog, limit a number of maximum reviews a day to motivate you by seeing that 0 more often, or you can make another filtered deck with different criteria (for example one with a limit set to 10 reviews) and rebuild it however many times you are able during the day (it accomplished the same thing as limiting the maximum reviews, but might give you more dopamine since you are technically accomplishing “finishing” a deck :D).
Good luck!
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Thank you so much Tarah! Really appreciate your reply!
I’ve just tried doing this but I was unsure on what to type exactly and created filtered decks inputting the following:
“is:due prop:due>-7”
“is:due prop:due<=-7”
I’ve now had a look and I’ve created a filtered deck that has incorporated data from multiple decks - what would I type in exactly to just get it from a single deck?
Also, in terms of rebuilding, does this need to be done daily?
Thanks again!
You’re welcome!
To select cards from a specific deck you just need to input deck:name into the search bar in the options. If your Deck’s name include spaces (like a deck called Spanish Vocabulary), you need to write the whole thing between " " symbols.
Using the formula from your post this would be either
deck:Spanish is:due -is:buried prop:due>-7 for a deck called Spanish
or
“deck:Spanish Vocabulary” is:due -is:buried prop:due>-7 for a deck called Spanish Vocabulary
Just fyi, here’s the list of all the different stuff you can type into that box - see especially Card state and Card properties sections to see how the prop:due stuff works and tweak it to suit your needs:
https://docs.ankiweb.net/searching.html
Yeah, the idea here is you rebuild this deck every day so it pulls all the cards into this one deck you go though, you make sure you finish at least this one and then, if you still have the energy, you go through some of your older backlog. If the number of cards it pulled into that prop:due>-7 is initially too high, try smaller number like prop:due>-4 (= cards due in the last 4 days) to hit that sweet spot of cards you are actually able to go though.
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That’s so fancy, I just used a piece of paper where I’d write, like, 900 cards due today, and tomorrow I’d write, 750 cards today, and I’d just watch this number grow smaller and smaller…