How To Merge Anki Decks Together
There’s a lot to study out there, and Anki will most likely have it for you spread out across multiple decks. I prefer to have everything in one deck. Different types of reviews may be thrown at you all at once in random order (whether that’s J-E, J-J, kanji, etc.) when it’s set up like this. But it saves you the time from having to review each deck one at a time, and it adds variety to your reviews.
So how do you easily combine your decks together?
1. Have at least 2 decks imported into your user account
If you are having trouble even with a basic import, make sure to have read through this guide.
2. Click the browse button, and go to the 2nd deck you want to combine with your 1st
For this example, I will be merging Intermediate Stage 2 with Intermediate Stage 1.
3. Highlight all the cards you want to move
Click on the first card, then hold Ctrl and press A (or Command + A on mac), or click and drag all the cards in Stage 2.
4. Click the Change Deck button
Highlight the location where you want to transfer the cards to, and hit Move Cards.
Below, I am moving stage 2 cards to stage 1.
5. Go to your user home screen, and delete the now empty stage 2
You might want to rename your Stage 1 to something like “Main Japanese Ass-Kicking Deck” so you know that all your cards are contained within.
Then you just repeat the process for every new deck you import.
And… you’re done!
How do you manage your decks?
Do you have everything merged into one deck? Or do you like to keep your decks separate and review them separately?
Founder of Jalup. iOS Software Engineer. Former attorney, translator, and interpreter. Still watching 月曜から夜ふかし weekly since 2013.
I have done this my self, to reduce all my Jalup decks to a single deck.
I can recommend tagging all the cards with the original deck name before doing this, if you want to keep track of where cards originated from.
I’ve done a lot of merging (it’s quite useful), but I still have 3 individual decks
1. JALUP Sentences
2. JALUP RTK Mod (I prefer to keep Kanji reviews separate – they require a lot more concentration than sentence reviews for me)
3. 自作カード (Self-made cards – I keep them separate from the JALUP stuff because they have a very different feel to them, since they come from actual media I read/played/watched and have context associated.)
I’m the same as Matt. But i group my self made with the one deck and treat the one deck like dictionary sentences in their category.
I like doing them separately because I can choose to dodge things for a day.
I have done something very similar with a kanji deck, a Jalup sentences deck and a deck with my own sentences. I also have a few others minor decks for kana and such, but they play a minor role in my daily cycle.
Ditto…
Currently I have 4 decks since I’m in the process of converting from RTK to Kanji Kingdom and those are separate decks.
I like being able to choose what kind of cards to review since at times I feel more like sentences and other times I feel more like kanji.
I never like to merge, I have a fake merge going on using this plug-in https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1089921461
Ex http://i.imgur.com/Lukj1rM.png
Here are my decks:
0 Jalup
1 RTK
2 Self made
3 Japanese proper nouns
4 School (I use anki for my school subjects)
I also have two active decks: RTK and everything else. The main reason I do this is so I can prioritize. e.g. maybe I don’t have enough time to finish all my reviews that day, but I at *least* want to knock out RTK reviews. This also lets me more easily see which kanji I’m still missing using Anki’s “kanji stats” feature (which can filter by deck but not tag).
Just make sure you use tags liberally in any case. A card can have as many tags as you want, and a well-tagged deck means you can make and undo deck changes super easily. Once you’ve merged two decks without tagging them, un-merging them can become quite painful.
I use subdecks and I manage my studies on a per-level basis. It is organized like this:
JaLUp
|- Beginner
||- Stage 1
||- …
|- Kana Conqueror
||- Hiragana
||- Katakana
|- Kanji Kingdom
||- Stage 1
|| – …
Then I made profiles for the “folders” where I set the number of new and old cards I want to see. It is important that the number of new cards for a top level folder is equal to the sum of new cards for sublevels, so that I see cards for every sublevel deck and not just for the first one anki finds. I deactivated subdecks that are too advanced for me at the moment so I am always seeing new cards I can handle.
I usually just play cards from the top level folder (JaLUp), but sometimes I make a personalized study where I augment the number of new cards for the day. This way I am at low pace the majority of the time, except the days I have more time/energy.
It seems as if there will be a problem with merging decks if there are still new cards.
For example, I’m currently working on JALUP beginner stage 3 and Kanji kingdom.
If I understand correctly, then all the new cards will appear in order. So I will have to finish all the new cards of JALUP beginner before the new cards of Kanji Kingdom appear. If I add JALUP stage 4 after that, then I will have to finish all of Kanji Kingdom new cards ( which will take many months) before the new sentence cards appear.
Is my thinking right about this or will the NEW cards appear in a mixed manner? If so, I think merging will be a great idea.
I wasn’t sure, but did the following.
I added Beginner Stage 1. I added Kanji Kingdom Stage 1. I merged them together. I started reviewing them. And it alternated between one new card from each deck. I believe this is because the cards are numbered as 1, 2, 3, 4…250 in a stage. And in both decks, they are numbered the same. So in due, you see 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3. Which leads to the alternation.
However, this works because the numbers align up in these 2 different sets. Jalup Beginner Stage 3 is 501-750, and Kanji Kingdom is 1-250, so when merged, it’ll have you do all the earlier numbers first. I do believe though there is a way to reposition the numbers. As long as they both have the same due numbers, they will be alternated.
hey guys,, how do I un link the decks from each other please
1. Create a new blank deck (calling it whatever you want) in your account that has all your decks
2. Browse all cards, selecting the multiple cards you want to move
3. Click Change Deck
4. Choose the new blank deck you just created.
I merge everything into one deck but first tag all the new cards with their original deck name.
Once merged I pull them out with custom study into filtered decks by tag. That way when I clear new cards they automatically return to the main deck for mixed review, but I can learn them in any deck order and quantity I want. The only thing this messes up is my learned stats as learned cards are instead counted as crammed cards, but I find that I care less and less as time goes on. I also make a filtered overdue deck when I get a backlog from being lazy and it really helps to first focus on only today’s due cards.
Hello everyone, if I merge two or more decks that I have already been revising, do I keep all revision statistics safe or will these be restarted?
Statistics are kept safe and don’t change (unless there are duplicate cards). If you are worried though, always make a backup first just in case.
With the new experimental v2 scheduler enabled, Anki now pulls from all sub decks randomly. It’s a wonderful improvement.
It does it randomly? Why not pull from all sub decks in the order of oldest to newest, or is that possible too?
Sorry, that was badly phrased on my part. The regular scheduler pulls from sub decks in alphabetical order. So if you had say Stage 1, Stage 2, and Stage 3, it would do all of Stage 1 in order due before Stage 2, then Stage 3. With V2 enabled it will look through all sub decks and pull by order due, as if it was a big merged deck. You can have everything in separate sub decks yet review from the parent deck and it will be like everything is merged, yet you can also see individual deck stats and/or review individual decks at will.
Hey, this doesn’t really work for me, the option of move cards that appears in instruction number 4, doesn’t appear in my screen
This really helped me out today, thank you!