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📖 Part 10: Shared Decks, Importing & Exporting

You don't always have to build from scratch. The Anki community shares thousands of ready-made decks, and Anki can pull in your own data in bulk from a spreadsheet. This part covers finding and vetting shared decks, the file formats Anki uses, importing from CSV, and exporting your work — whether to share it or to keep a solid backup.

📚 What You'll Learn

By the end of this part, you'll understand:

  • Where to find shared decks and how to import a downloaded one
  • The honest tradeoff of premade decks — when they help and when they hurt
  • The difference between .apkg, .colpkg, and plain-text/CSV files
  • How to import your own cards in bulk by mapping columns to fields
  • How to export a deck or your whole collection — and when to include scheduling
  • How updating a shared deck merges, and why to do it carefully
In This Part

Shared Decks

Anki hosts a large community library of ready-made decks at ankiweb.net/shared. People have built and published decks for just about everything: language vocabulary (Spanish, Japanese, and dozens more), enormous medical decks used by students worldwide, geography (countries, capitals, flags), history, chemistry, coding, and countless niche subjects. Many are free, and some are genuinely excellent.

📖 Definition

Shared deck: a deck someone else created and published to AnkiWeb, offered as a downloadable .apkg file that anyone can import into their own collection.

Importing one is easy. Browse the shared-decks page, open a deck's page, and download its .apkg file. Then in the Anki desktop app choose File → Import and select the file — or simply double-click the .apkg and Anki opens and imports it. The deck (and any subdecks, note types, and media it contains) appears in your collection, ready to study.

✅ Tip

An imported deck's cards start as new in your collection — you begin learning them at your own pace, at your own daily new-card limit. Importing a 5,000-card deck does not dump 5,000 reviews on you tomorrow; it just makes them available to learn gradually.

The Honest Tradeoff

Premade decks are tempting — someone did the work, so why not just download it? Sometimes that's exactly right. But there's a real tradeoff, and it ties directly back to why Anki works at all.

⚠️ Important: The act of making a card — deciding what to ask, phrasing it, choosing the answer — is itself part of learning. Cards you didn't write are often less memorable, because you never did that processing. This is the same reason we stressed writing your own atomic cards earlier in the guide.

On top of that, shared decks vary wildly in quality. Some are meticulously crafted; many are bloated, contain errors, use awkward phrasing, or cram far too much onto each card. And a big deck is a big commitment — importing 10,000 cards you'll never realistically sustain just creates a mountain of overdue reviews and guilt.

⚠️ Watch Out

Don't import a giant deck on impulse and start "learning" all of it. A 10,000-card deck at 20 new cards a day is well over a year of daily learning on that deck alone. Be honest about what you'll keep up with.

So how do you decide? A good rule of thumb:

Situation Better choice
Standardized, universal content (anatomy terms, country capitals, the periodic table) A well-regarded shared deck can be excellent — the facts are the same for everyone
Personal, nuanced, or class-specific material (your professor's emphasis, your own mnemonics) Make your own cards — the processing is the point and the content is yours
You like a shared deck but it's huge Import it, then study a sustainable slice — suspend or delete the rest for now

The best practice is to vet before you commit: read the description, check the size and reviews, and either start with a slice or prune the deck down to what you'll actually use. A well-chosen shared deck for standardized material, paired with your own cards for the personal stuff, is often the ideal combination.

File Formats & CSV Import

Anki uses a few different file types, and knowing which is which saves a lot of confusion.

Format What it is Use it for
.apkg A deck package — the notes and cards of one deck (or several), with media, and optionally their scheduling information. Sharing a deck, or backing up a single deck
.colpkg A collection package — your entire Anki: all decks, all cards, all note types, all media, all scheduling. Full backups and migrating to a new computer
Plain text / .csv A spreadsheet-style file: one note per line, fields separated by a delimiter. Bulk-adding your own cards from a spreadsheet or another app

Importing from CSV

If you have data in a spreadsheet — say a two-column list of terms and definitions — you can turn it into cards in one go. Export it from your spreadsheet as CSV (or a tab-separated text file), then in Anki choose File → Import and pick the file. Anki's import screen then lets you configure the mapping:

  • Note type — which template these notes will use (e.g. Basic).
  • Deck — where the imported cards will live.
  • Field separator — comma, tab, semicolon; Anki usually detects it, but check it matches your file.
  • Column-to-field mapping — tell Anki that column 1 is the Front field, column 2 is the Back, and so on. You can also map a column to Tags.
  • HTML handling — a checkbox for whether the fields contain HTML that should be rendered (formatting, line breaks) rather than shown literally.
  • Duplicate handling — Anki can update existing notes, ignore duplicates, or import them anyway, matched on the first field.
Example CSV (comma-separated, two fields → Front, Back):

hola,hello
gracias,thank you
por favor,please
"buenos días, amigo","good morning, friend"

✅ Tip

Wrap any field that itself contains the separator in double quotes (see the last line above), or the import will split it in the wrong place. And always import a small sample first to confirm your column mapping and separator are right before importing thousands of rows.

Exporting & Backups

Exporting is the mirror image of importing. Choose File → Export and pick what you want to produce.

Exporting a deck (.apkg)

Select a single deck and export it as an .apkg. Two checkboxes matter here:

  • Include scheduling information — whether the export carries each card's review history and due dates.
  • Include media — whether images and audio referenced by the cards travel with the file.

📖 When to include scheduling

Include it when you're backing up your own deck or moving it to your own device — you want your progress preserved. Exclude it when you're sharing a deck with other people — they should start the cards fresh, not inherit your personal review history and due dates.

Exporting the whole collection (.colpkg)

To back up or migrate everything at once, export the entire collection as a .colpkg. This single file contains all your decks, note types, media, and scheduling — everything needed to recreate your Anki exactly on another machine via File → Import.

⚠️ Important: Anki already makes automatic backups (kept locally and pruned over time), and syncing to AnkiWeb protects you against a single device failing. But an occasional manual .colpkg export, saved somewhere separate like a cloud drive or USB stick, is a smart extra layer — especially before a big reorganization or an app update.

Updating Shared Decks

Popular shared decks get updated by their maintainers — new cards, fixes, better media. When a newer version comes out, you can import it on top of the one you already have, and Anki will merge the changes rather than making a second copy.

Merging works by matching notes: Anki recognizes notes that came from the same original and updates them in place, adds genuinely new ones, and leaves your review progress intact where it can. This is what lets you keep a deck current without losing the memories you've built.

⚠️ Watch Out

Updating is powerful but not perfectly gentle. If you've personally edited cards in a shared deck, an update from the author can overwrite your edits, because the incoming version is treated as the newer content for those notes. Scheduling can also shift for cards that changed. Before updating a deck you've customized heavily, export a backup first — and consider whether you'd rather keep your edited copy as-is.

None of this should scare you off shared decks — updates are usually a good thing. Just go in aware: back up first if you've made meaningful edits, read the update notes if the author provided them, and check a few cards afterward to confirm nothing important changed unexpectedly.

🛠️ How To: Find, Vet & Import a Shared Deck

What you'll do: pick a shared deck deliberately, import it, and trim it down to a sustainable slice you'll actually study — instead of drowning in a giant deck.

Step by step

  1. Browse the shared decks. Go to ankiweb.net/shared and search for your subject.
  2. Vet the candidates. On each deck's page, read the description, check the rating and number of ratings, note the card count and last-updated date, and skim any sample cards. Prefer well-rated, reasonably sized, recently maintained decks.
  3. Download and import. Download the .apkg, then double-click it (or use File → Import) to bring it into your collection.
  4. Prune to a sustainable slice. Open Browse, look through the cards, and suspend or delete the parts you don't need right now — off-topic sections, cards you already know, or excess beyond what you can learn. A focused subset beats an abandoned mega-deck.
  5. Study a realistic amount daily. Set a modest new-card limit and start learning the slice you kept. You can always unsuspend more later as you finish what you have.
💡 Tip

For your own bulk data, skip the shared library entirely and use CSV import (File → Import): build a spreadsheet of terms and answers, export it as CSV, map the columns to Front/Back (and optionally a Tags column), and import — a fast way to turn a study list you already have into a deck.

Best Practices

✅ Do's

  • Vet before you import — check ratings, size, and freshness; a bad deck wastes far more time than it saves.
  • Start with a slice — import, then suspend or delete down to what you'll sustain.
  • Exclude scheduling when sharing so recipients start cards fresh; include it when backing up your own work.
  • Export a .colpkg periodically to an external location as a manual backup on top of auto-backups and sync.

❌ Don'ts

  • Don't import a 10,000-card deck on impulse — be honest about what you can realistically learn.
  • Don't assume shared cards are good — quality varies enormously; prune ruthlessly.
  • Don't update a heavily edited shared deck without backing up — an update can overwrite your changes.
  • Don't mix up the formats — .apkg is a deck, .colpkg is your whole collection; sharing a .colpkg by mistake shares everything you have.

💡 Pro Tips

  • For standardized facts, a great shared deck is a genuine time-saver; for personal or class-specific material, your own cards almost always win.
  • Test any CSV import on a handful of rows first to confirm the separator and column mapping before importing the full file.

📓 Learning Journal

Keep a journal as you work through this guide — digital or paper. After each part, jot down:

  • Key ideas you learned
  • Things that clicked for you
  • Questions or confusion points to revisit
  • Ideas you want to try
  • Your progress and how you feel about it

✍️ This part's prompt: Think about something you're currently studying. Is it standardized content where a shared deck would help, or personal/nuanced material where your own cards would serve you better? Write your reasoning. If a shared deck fits, what would a sustainable slice of it look like for you?

📝 Part Summary

🎓 Key Takeaways

  • Thousands of shared decks live at ankiweb.net/shared; download an .apkg and import via File → Import (or double-click).
  • Premade decks save time for standardized content but are often less memorable and vary in quality — vet, prune, and study a sustainable slice.
  • .apkg = a deck package; .colpkg = your whole collection; CSV / plain text = bulk-importing your own cards.
  • CSV import lets you map columns to fields, choose the note type and deck, set the separator, and handle HTML and duplicates.
  • Include scheduling when backing up your own deck; exclude it when sharing. Export a .colpkg occasionally as a manual backup.
  • Updating a shared deck merges by note — but can overwrite your edits, so back up first.

🎉 What You Can Now Do

You can bring content into Anki from any direction — download and vet a community deck, prune it to something you'll actually finish, or bulk-import your own study list from a spreadsheet. You can also get your work back out safely, choosing correctly between sharing a fresh deck and keeping a complete, scheduled backup of everything.

❓ Common Questions

Should I use a shared deck or make my own?

It depends on the material. For standardized, universal facts — anatomy, capitals, the periodic table — a well-rated shared deck is often excellent and saves real time. For personal or class-specific material, your own cards win, because writing them is part of the learning and they'll match exactly what you need. Many people do both: a shared deck for the standardized core, their own cards for the rest.

What's the difference between .apkg and .colpkg again?

An .apkg is a deck package — one or more decks with their cards and media, optionally with scheduling. A .colpkg is a collection package — your entire Anki, everything at once. Use .apkg to share or back up a single deck; use .colpkg to back up or migrate your whole setup. Be careful not to share a .colpkg when you meant to share just one deck.

If I import a huge deck, will I have to review thousands of cards tomorrow?

No. Imported cards arrive as new cards, and your daily new-card limit controls how many you actually start learning each day. A 5,000-card deck at 20 new per day introduces them gradually. That said, be realistic — even at that pace a giant deck is a long commitment, so prune it to a slice you'll finish rather than letting it balloon.

🔭 Up Next

In the next part, we'll look at add-ons — the community extensions that add features to the Anki desktop app — and, just as importantly, how to install and manage them safely so they enhance your setup instead of breaking it.

📚 Additional Resources

🌟 Keep Going

Knowing how to get content in and out of Anki — thoughtfully, not indiscriminately — makes you hard to stump. You can lean on the community where it helps and stay in control of your own collection. And with a habit of occasional backups, your years of memories are safe. Onward!