Anki to Jalup App – Progress Conversion
Using the Jalup decks on Anki, but always wanted to give the Jalup app a try? The thought of losing your Anki progress keeping you far away from ever considering it? Well let’s solve this problem. The following is a guide on how to convert your Anki progress to the Jalup App, so you can continue learning and reviewing like nothing has changed – except being on a brand new awesome platform.
This process is a bit complex because of the way Anki sets things up, but nothing you can’t handle if you’ve ever used Google Sheets. It will probably take you around 30-60 minutes to do. I’m going to use the 50 card sample from Jalup Beginner as an example, where I’ve completed 30 of the 50 cards.
Let’s begin.
1. Open up your Anki2 Folder
Your Anki2 folder on your computer is where all your profiles, decks and media for your decks are stored.
This can be accessed by:
On Windows, the latest Anki versions store your Anki files in your appdata folder. You can access it by opening the file manager, and typing %APPDATA%\Anki2 in the location field. Older versions of Anki stored your Anki files in a folder called Anki in your Documents folder.
On Mac computers, recent Anki versions store all their files in the ~/Library/Application Support/Anki2 folder. The Library folder is hidden by default, but can be revealed in Finder by holding down the option key while clicking on the Go menu. If you’re on an older Anki version, your Anki files will be in your Documents/Anki folder.
If this is confusing, in Windows, you just right click on the folder icon on your computer, open a file explorer, and copy and paste %APPDATA%\Anki2 in the address bar. Hit enter, and you should be brought to your Anki2 folder.
Here you’ll see a list of your user profiles, and possibly an addons folder depending on plugins you use.
2. Select your user profile
Open up the folder with the profile that has the progress you want to transfer over to the app.
3. Copy your collection.anki2 file to another location
Copy and paste the file below to your desktop (or an easily accessible location):
collection.anki2
This may be a somewhat large file depending on how long you’ve been using Anki. Make sure you don’t choose collection.anki2-journal, collection, or collection.media.db2. Don’t cut and paste it, just in case something goes wrong, because you don’t want to possibly corrupt the original file with all your data.
4. Download DB Browser for SQLite
“DB Browser for SQLite” is free software that allows you to open up sqlite databases. Don’t worry, you don’t need to be a programmer to understand this. Just know that:
- Anki stores your data in tables in a database
- You are going to convert your data from the database into a spreadsheet
5. Open up DB Browser
After installing the above application, open it:
Click and drag your copied (not the original) collection.anki2 file into the white space area below Name. It should look like this if you successfully added it.
6. Convert your data to a .csv file
Click File > Export > Table(s) as CSV file
If it’s not already, make sure that the chosen table is cards. Then hit okay.
Upload to Google Drive.
7. Convert to Google Sheet
Right click on your cards.csv sheet in Google drive, and open it with Google Sheets. You should have a spreadsheet called “Cards,” with all your Anki cards loaded.
These cards are all in order. In my example, it will list the first 50 JB sample cards, from 1 to 50. This order is very important when uploading to the Jalup app, so be aware of this.
When your decks are more complex, you’ll need to do a bit of editing. Ideally what you want is: one deck on your user account that you converted cards from. If you have never merged decks, now is the time to do it. If you find this harder, then you’ll have to repeat the process here for every deck. Which is fine, but may make things more confusing.
8. Download and open up the “Anki Conversion Sheet”
Download the following file:
Upload it to Google Drive and open it as a Google Sheet. Place the Cards Sheet and Anki Conversion Sheet side by side. The Anki Conversion sheet has a title row, and 3 sample rows, that extend from column A to P (you must scroll right to see more).
9. Copy the appropriate columns
There are 5 columns you need to copy from the Cards Sheet to the Anki Conversion Sheet. They are highlighted on the sheet in the brownish-pink color.
- mod
- ivl
- factor
- reps
- lapses
One at a time, you are going to copy each column from Cards to the Anki Conversion Sheet. Do not copy the title of the column (ex. mod or ivl). Start from row 2 on the Cards Sheet, scroll all the way down to the final row, and copy all the numbers. When you paste it to the Anki Conversion Sheet, make sure you start from row 5 (after the title and the 3 sample rows).
When you are finished, on the Anki Conversion Sheet, these 5 columns should be filled with the amount of cards you are converting. You can close out the original Cards Sheet, as you will no longer be using it.
10. Delete new cards
New Cards in Anki – cards you’ve never reviewed – can’t (and don’t need to) be converted. In order to find out where your new cards are, go to the “reps” column. Scroll down until you reach 0. After the first 0, it should be all 0s. These are all cards you haven’t reviewed.
From the Anki Conversion Sheet, you are going to remove all the rows where the reps are 0 (meaning they are new cards). Highlight all the relevant rows, right click, and then delete rows.
11. Click and drag every other column, to fill out all the other rows
Click on B4 of Last Reviewed Date. Then click on and drag the little blue box on the bottom right, all the way to final row of the sheet that has data.
In all the non-pink rows, there are formulas that convert the data into usable data for the Jalup App. By clicking and dragging, it is applying the formula to all your rows. Do not skip this step and make sure it covers all the rows.
Do this for every other non-pink column (in other words, all the columns that are blank), except for column G. Also make sure you don’t do this for the pink columns. It should start to look like the following:
Column G is special, and you just need to copy the +0000 the entire way down the sheet (if you click and drag, it will merely increment it, and you don’t want that).
12. Check and possibly edit
There are 2 columns which you may need to manually edit, and these are ivl and easiness. This is because Anki has something called a learning phase that takes some reviews before it passes into the normal review phase. Until it moves until the review phase the easiness and intervals aren’t created. You have two options to solve this:
1. Before you do any of the conversion process above, make sure all your cards are out of the “learning” phase and have an easiness and interval. You can check if your deck has any of these in Anki, by right clicking on the “Deck” in the image below and making sure the column for interval and Ease is checked off.
In the above image, the cards with Ease 0% and Interval (learning) are the problems.
2. Look for the 0s and replace them.
For the example in this post, I purposely left cards in the “learning” phase so I can show you what to do. It’s two simple steps to fix this.
- Under ivl (the first pink column), look for any 0 and replace it with 1
- Under the factor column, look for any 0 and replace it with 2500
This sets it to the defaults, as though it was now out of the learning phase in Anki.
13. Slight variance
If you compare the due dates from within the Anki app, and the due dates in the Anki Conversion sheet, you’ll notice they very slightly differ. This is because Anki adjusts the time to your time zone, and the converted sheet displays them in GMT.
This isn’t a big deal, but it may slightly affect the intervals by around a day depending on your time zone.
14. Download and Open the Jalup Conversion Sheet
Now that you are finished filling out the Anki Conversion Sheet, you need to open up the Jalup Conversion sheet. Download it below:
It is a blank sheet with color coded column headers at the top, and sample card deck ids and numbers filled out already. Have the Anki Conversion Sheet and Jalup Conversion Sheet opened up side by side.
15. Copy the data over
Similar to the way you moved data from your Cards Sheet to the Anki Conversion sheet, you will be doing the same thing here. Everything is color coded, so you know exactly what to move. You’ll be copying and pasting the following columns:
Green: Due Date
Blue: Easiness (Ease Multiplier)
Red: Seconds
Purple: Card Attempt
Yellow: Correct
Orange: Incorrect
When you copy a column from the Anki Conversion Sheet, make sure to skip the title and the first 3 rows of data. Start copying from row 5.
You then want to paste it right into the color coded empty cell at the top of the Jalup Conversion Sheet. In the screenshot below, I’m pasting the green column right into the green empty cell (it will temporarily remove the green at top) so it starts from row 1. When you paste it, you need to tap the clipboard and then hit Paste values only. Otherwise it is going to try to copy the formulas, which will be wrong on this new sheet. The green color for the first cell should return.
jb1, jb2, jb3, etc. will change to the correct numbers as soon as you hit Paste values only
Repeat this for all 5 columns, making sure you always paste the values (even if it looks like it might be okay). If you don’t, things won’t work. After you are finished, check to make sure that the columns (minus the title and sample rows) look exactly the same on both the Anki Conversion Sheet and Jalup Conversion Sheet.
Columns A and B in the Jalup Conversion sheet are already filled out for you as a sample. However, this is just an example, and needs to be changed depending on what data you are converting. The way it is set up right now is 1000 jb cards and 232 kc cards.
You’ll need to add the deck name code and card number in each respective column (A & B):
jb (1-1000)
ji (1001-2000)
ja (2001-3000)
je (3001-4000)
kc (7001-7232)
kk (7233-10300)
These need to be in order. You can use the click and drag function (like you did earlier above) to increment the numbers as you go down.
16. Fill in the remaining 4 columns
There are 4 columns which you’ll need to click and drag down (the little blue box on the bottom right of the first cell) to fill out.
G: Experience points: will appear as regular numbers, which is just an estimate based on your easiness level and reviews done (Anki doesn’t keep track of experience).
H: Card time: Set to 0 for all the rows. You can change this if you want, but it isn’t important.
K: Frozen/Starred: Set to 0, unless you want to specifically freeze or star cards as you are converting.
L: Status: This must be set to review, for all rows.
If you did everything right, all rows should be completely filled out for all columns. Remove the colors from the cells by clicking the paint bucket tool, followed by reset (this shouldn’t make a difference, but just to be clean). You can close out the Anki Conversion sheet, as you won’t be using this anymore.
17. Export a blank copy of your Jalup App progress
Open up your Jalup app. Make whatever purchase is required to match your Anki cards. For example, if you are converting Jalup Beginner from Anki, make sure you have Jalup Beginner (or the Maximum Package) purchased, installed and loaded on the app.
Export your progress from the app as a new .csv (Jalup Backup).
18. The final copy and paste
Convert your newly backed up export from the app to Google Sheets, and open this backup sheet side by side with your Jalup Conversion sheet that you just finished. Copy everything from the Jalup Conversion sheet to your new Jalup Backup Sheet in the appropriate places (refer to this post for additional help). This will vary greatly based on what you are copying over. In this example, I’m copying over 30 completed JB cards. Make sure when you paste, you also just paste values like you did above. Don’t just copy the entire sheet over as is.
Save your Jalup backup sheet as a .csv file. Then import into your app. If everything worked, it should show you the appropriate learned and reviewed cards. Remember, the intervals may be about a day off based on your time zone.
Converting happiness!
This post may be a little rough around the edges, and things may not work 100% as smoothly (depending on what your Anki deck looks like). You may have to play around with a few things that I haven’t thought of, but you now have all the converting tools at your fingertips.
Founder of Jalup. iOS Software Engineer. Former attorney, translator, and interpreter. Still watching 月曜から夜ふかし weekly since 2013.
Okay, so I’m on the Jalup Conversion Sheet but I’m not sure what to do with the A and B columns because I have several Anki decks and some of them aren’t Jalup decks, so I’m not sure where the first Jalup Beginner card is on the Jalup Conversion Sheet. Is there a way to make another Anki account and copy my decks over to that and then use that Anki account to merge all the Jalup decks and delete the other decks? I’ve spent 2 hours trying to figure this out and it’s so frustrating…I want to use the Jalup app, too.
Nevermind! I decided that since the Jalup app doesn’t really have a daily limit for learning new cards, I’ll just breeze through Jalup Beginner and the first 3 stages of Kanji Kingdom to catch up. :)
I do have one suggestion on improving Kanji Kingdom. An option where you can write out the kanji with your finger on the screen. When I’m using Anki on Android, it allows me to write the kanji on my screen and this makes it a lot more fun and easier than having to use pen and paper.
Thanks for the suggestion. I’ll add it to the future feature suggestion list :)
Yeah, you’d want to create a new user, then switch over your decks to that user first. Then do the export.