Trying to restore wrongly replaced cards from a mistake import

[adrenaline67]

Hello,

I use Anki ⁨25.02 on Mac.
I have downloaded a deck (let’s call it Y) and imported it to Anki and sadly, by mistake, several cards that were already existing in my main deck (let’s call it X) were replaced by those of the imported deck Y. I only noticed a few days later, so cannot just click ctrl+Z.

Fortunately I have an old .apkg back up containing almost all of the replaced cards.
But I cannot manage to import it to Anki as duplicated cards are just ignored and I cannot see any option to change this behaviour.

Using this back up, how could I manually restore the wrongly replaced cards?

Thank you very much for your help.

[sorata]

The import screen provides you with an option to decide the behaviour when there are duplicate cards. See Packaged Decks - Anki Manual.

If you select the option to always update for duplicate notes, they’ll get updated.

[adrenaline67]

Thank you for your reply.

Unfortunately I cannot proceed this way because since the mistake happened, I have done several modifications to other cards from my original deck X. If I do this way, I will loose all these modifications.

I am looking for another solution…

[Danika_Dakika]

I don’t think you need to go back to an old APKG you found if it doesn’t have everything you need. Try this:

1. Find the automatic backup of your profile from just before you imported deck Y and import that COLPKG into a new (temporary) profile.
2. In that correct version of deck X, select the notes/cards that you didn’t want to change. Export just those notes those as an APKG.
3. Import that APKG into your main profile, and be sure to select Update Notes > Always.
4. [When you’re satisfied you have what you want, delete the temporary profile.]

[adrenaline67]

@Danika_Dakika

Thank you very much, this solution works well for my case.
Problem solved!