Anki packages may also contain scheduling information, which is useful if you want to
transfer decks between devices or profiles. However, when importing
a deck shared by someone else, you typically do not want to adopt their card intervals
or review history.If you encounter imported cards with unexpectedly large intervals, the deck author may
accidentally have included their scheduling information. You can use the
Set Due Date feature to reset the imported cards. On Anki
23.10 and later, you can remove any scheduling information during the import process
by leaving the “Import any learning progress” option unselected. This will also remove
any “leech” or “marked” tags from the imported cards.
When you import an .apkg file, Anki will identify any notes in it that are
already in your collection due to a previous import. If the notes in the file
are newer than your local copy, the notes will be updated with the contents of
the file by default.This updating process is generally not possible if the note type is changed (e.g. if either
you or the deck author do things like add an extra field to the note type).
You will still be able to import any missing notes from the file, but
notes you have imported previously will not be updated if the deck author
has made changes.
Anki 23.10 introduced more flexibility: You can choose to unconditionally
update notes and note types, always overwriting your modifications,
or, on the other hand, never update existing objects.Also, if both you and the deck author modified the same note type, you can now decide to
merge the two versions. This will preserve all templates and fields contained in
either one, but will require a full sync, and may mark other existing notes as modified.
Merging relies on template and field ids, which were introduced in Anki 2.1.67.
If a template or field lacks an id, because it has been created with an earlier
release, Anki attempts to find an equivalent by comparing names.See this this add-on for why it is
advantageous to share note types with field and template ids, and how to add them to
existing ones.
