Bringing decks in

The sync updates decks the store already holds. Two other roads bring a deck into the store, both from the same Sync with Anki page: a deck that lives only in Anki, and a package built by Parseh — yours from another computer, or someone else’s.

1. A deck the store has never held#

Once a deck is imported into Anki and lived in, the live copy is the one inside Anki: renamed perhaps, reorganised, reviewed for months. If the store is ever lost or reset — a fresh copy of the toolbox, a new computer — while Anki still has the deck, bring it back from an Anki export.

Export it from Anki as for a sync, drop it on the page, and press Preview the changes. A deck of the export the store does not hold is named in the report — Persian CI::Old flashcards is not in the store yet (312 notes). Syncing only updates decks the store already holds. — with a button of its own, Bring this deck in for the first time, which names that one deck and no other. When several are new at once (a fresh copy meeting a whole collection) Bring all 4 decks in (1210 notes) brings them together.

What it does:

• Every note of one of Parseh’s note types — any language’s pair — becomes a card file under anki/<language>/<slug>/cards/, keeping the note’s guid exactly and the deck’s name and Anki id exactly, all taken straight from the export. The guid is what lets the next build update the very same notes instead of making copies; the name is what lets it land in the very same deck, since Anki files a package’s cards by the deck’s name. The id lets the sync recognise the deck even after you rename it in Anki — though its packages go on carrying the name it came in with, so rename it in both places all the same (Renaming a deck).
• The deck is filed under the language of the note type most of its notes use; each card keeps its own language.
• Every picture and recording a card names is copied out of the export into the deck’s media/, the recordings read back out of the [sound:] in its picture fields.
• A card sitting in a filtered deck is filed under its home deck.
• A note carrying formatting the store cannot hold (HTML typed inside Anki) comes in as an Anki-owned mirror, exactly as the sync would treat it, so a rebuild never flattens it.
• A note of any other type (a stock Basic card, say) is left out: guessing at an unfamiliar layout would write nonsense. Bring those over by hand.

While it works, the Working… indicator says Bringing decks in from the Anki export. The button then says what came in — Brought in: Persian CI::Old flashcards (312 cards). 48 images or recordings copied. — names any picture or recording the export did not carry (export again with Include media ticked), counts the notes kept in Anki for their formatting, and ends Preview again to sync it from now on. The styling of your note types is learnt at the same time, as a sync learns it.

Every shape of export is read: Anki’s newest compressed one, Anki 2.1’s, and the oldest.

2. A package built by Parseh#

The .apkg the build button makes is the only thing that has to travel between two copies of Parseh: its notes carry the right note types and fields, its pictures and recordings ride along, and the deck’s name and id are inside. Drop it on the Sync with Anki page like any export, from your other computer or from someone who made the cards with Parseh.

Every package Parseh builds is stamped, and the page recognises the stamp at Preview the changes:

A package built by Parseh (deck persian-market), not an export from Anki. It says nothing about what Anki holds, so there is nothing to sync — but it can be brought in:

Steps 4 and 5 stay shut — there is nothing to apply — until the deck is brought in: then step 5 opens with its download. Build it, import that into Anki, and from then on export from Anki and sync as usual.

Its cards are filed as pkg-<guid>.json. Unlike apkg-<guid>.json, that name is not taken as Anki’s word that the note exists — the package came from Parseh, not from your Anki — so if a later genuine export lacks some of them, they read as Here, not in Anki yet, never as deleted.

3. Two things the sync refuses#

Both would teach the store something false about your collection, so the page stops rather than guess.

The .apkg Parseh built. It is a perfectly good package, sitting in the same downloads folder as a real export — it is the very file step 5 gives you. Synced, it would mark every card in it as confirmed by Anki, including cards no import has ever carried; the next genuine export, lacking them, would then look like a mass deletion. So the stamp stops the sync and offers to bring the package in instead, as above.

Bringing in a deck the store already holds. That would write a second file for every note. The page offers to bring a deck in only when the sync could not match it, and the bootstrap itself leaves alone a deck whose id the store already holds, across the whole store; that deck’s notes come home through the sync.

What the bootstrap cannot see is a deck the store holds under another id. A deck brought in from an Anki export has Anki’s id, so it is recognised even after a rename in Anki. A deck made on the pages has an id of Parseh’s own that Anki never kept, so it is recognised by its name alone: rename it in Anki only, or let Anki merge two languages’ decks of one name, and the page names it as a deck the store does not hold. Do not bring it in then. Give a renamed deck back its name, or rename it in the store too (Renaming a deck); keep two languages’ decks apart by name (A deck belongs to a language).

python3 lib/import_apkg.py "../Persian CI.apkg"          # decks the store does not hold yetpython3 lib/import_apkg.py "shared.apkg" --merge         # and the new cards of decks it holds