Anki Troubleshooting: Study by tag

[Qweras]

I'm an M1 going through the med school studying-optimization process. I see the value in a flashcard type system for memorizing information and have been trying out both FC and Anki. FC seems to have a few technical glitches and there are few questions that seem to be a bit out of left field, or at least irrelevant for an M1, but I like the idea of not having to take the time to make my own cards. I'm also experimenting with Anki.

My main trouble with Anki right now that severely limits its usefulness is that I can't seem to study by tag. I click on the deck, click on "Custom Study," "Study by tag" and select my tag. When I do, only a fraction of the cards I know are tagged with that particular tag appear. For example, when I click on Browse and then select a tag I'll see 150 cards, but when I try to study that tag I'll see 23. I've tried increasing every limit I can find to no avail.

Obviously I am doing something wrong, but I can't figure out what it is. Yes, I have spent about an hour searching threads and trying to figure it out, and at this point I'm spinning my wheels and Anki is pretty much useless to me until I get this figured out. So if any Anki-user can help me out I'd really appreciate it!

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[Pacna]

I like to study by tag, too, but I never like using the Custom Study thing unless I'm timing myself. As an aside, a custom study of 20 new cards to get done in 20 minutes can do wonders to improve your time spent per card. Without some accountability, I find myself wandering off, looking things up excessively, and generally wasting a lot of time.

Anyways, here's what I do to study by tag: go into Browse, select the tag you want on the left, click any card, ctrl+a, and move the cards to another deck (Change Deck at the top).

 

[mehc012]

I'm an M1 going through the med school studying-optimization process. I see the value in a flashcard type system for memorizing information and have been trying out both FC and Anki. FC seems to have a few technical glitches and there are few questions that seem to be a bit out of left field, or at least irrelevant for an M1, but I like the idea of not having to take the time to make my own cards. I'm also experimenting with Anki.

My main trouble with Anki right now that severely limits its usefulness is that I can't seem to study by tag. I click on the deck, click on "Custom Study," "Study by tag" and select my tag. When I do, only a fraction of the cards I know are tagged with that particular tag appear. For example, when I click on Browse and then select a tag I'll see 150 cards, but when I try to study that tag I'll see 23. I've tried increasing every limit I can find to no avail.

Obviously I am doing something wrong, but I can't figure out what it is. Yes, I have spent about an hour searching threads and trying to figure it out, and at this point I'm spinning my wheels and Anki is pretty much useless to me until I get this figured out. So if any Anki-user can help me out I'd really appreciate it!

It sounds like you either have a lot of siblings (multiple cards from the same note) or buried cards.

First of all, when you create the Custom Study deck, make sure you are telling it to include at least 150 cards (I usually set it to some arbitrarily high number like 999.)
Then, if you're out of reviews before you'd expect to be, see if there's an 'Unbury' button down at the bottom on the deck's main page. That will let you see the cards that it is hiding based on your spacing settings.

 

[Qweras]

Thanks for the suggestions! I think unbury may have been the culprit in my case, but I also didn't know how to change the decks so easily so I'll definitely be trying that too.

 

[mehc012]

Thanks for the suggestions! I think unbury may have been the culprit in my case, but I also didn't know how to change the decks so easily so I'll definitely be trying that too.

You'll still have to unbury them. There are also a few downsides to changing decks rather than doing a Custom Study deck:
- You will not have the option to study without rescheduling
- Cards that aren't due, won't show up for study in the new deck unless you make a custom study deck anyway
- If you delete the deck, the cards will be deleted, rather than with Custom Study where they return to their original decks.

Now, I agree that the interface when choosing tags is a bit cumbersome. To get around that, I usually just make a Custom Study deck based on whatever tags I entered the time before, and then open the 'Options' within that deck. The search terms the deck is using are listed at the top, and I can manually edit them far more quickly/thoroughly than searching the tiny list and checking things off...doing it this way is basically how you would search in the Browser for those cards you want.

 

[pooap]

hey, sorry i know this response is super late, but i was having this same problem today with the anki netters cards, and the reason was because i had my settings as "bury related cards until next day" but because they were all from the same note type they would get burried after studying the first one. i know you've probably already solved this problem, but i just wanted to post this here to help other people who may be having the same problem.