# Wrong update of non-existing note

**URL:** <https://forums.ankiweb.net/t/wrong-update-of-non-existing-note/1745>\
**Category:** Help\
**Created:** [August 2, 2020, 4:44pm UTC](https://forums.ankiweb.net/t/wrong-update-of-non-existing-note/1745 "2020-08-02T16:44:12Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![ArthurMilchior](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/forums.ankiweb.net/arthurmilchior/32/4684_2.png) [@ArthurMilchior](https://forums.ankiweb.net/u/ArthurMilchior)\
**Post date:** [August 2, 2020, 4:44pm UTC](https://forums.ankiweb.net/t/wrong-update-of-non-existing-note/1745/1 "2020-08-02T16:44:12Z")

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There is currently a silent error with [https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1566928056](https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1566928056) and I believe that it would be nicer to throw a real error message instead of just ignoring the problem. Would help devs’ debugging I believe and also ensure that users saw that something went wrong.

To be specific, I used to create a note by taking an already existing note, changing its id and flushing it. That made a copy of the note keeping fields, tags, and even creation date if I didn’t change the id too much.

It seems it began to break with recent version. I do not speak rust, but I assume that the problem is that “flush” now call “update note” and that if the note does not already exists in the collection, the action does nothing.

I really believe that, at least a stdout message, should be welcome here.

Is there any way to create a note with a specific ID ? I was really looking forward being able to change the creation date of note. I fear it means that I need to do the change manually in the database if I can’t just use flush anymore, and I don’t know what would be the consequences

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**Author:** ![dae](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/forums.ankiweb.net/dae/32/65_2.png) [@dae](https://forums.ankiweb.net/u/dae)\
**Post date:** [August 3, 2020, 7:55am UTC](https://forums.ankiweb.net/t/wrong-update-of-non-existing-note/1745/2 "2020-08-03T07:55:31Z")

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This may change when it comes time to rework the undo handling, but that’s still a while off - for now you’ll need to have a new id allocated and then immediately update the note and its cards.

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/uploads/anki2/original/1X/8f1279ababc5879d54e4838989f606cfe55af8c7.jpeg) [@system](https://forums.ankiweb.net/u/system)\
**Post date:** [May 1, 2023, 5:37am UTC](https://forums.ankiweb.net/t/wrong-update-of-non-existing-note/1745/3 "2023-05-01T05:37:57Z")

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Closed on May 1, 2023, 5:37am UTC