Anki Flashcards Decks – Detailed Instructions

Since several people asked for more detailed instructions on how to use the Anki flashcard decks I prepared this little step-by-step HowTo guide.

Step 1 – Download and Installing Anki

If you have already installed Anki on your computer jump directly to Step 2.
First of all you need Anki Flashcard program on your computer, you can download it freely from Anki website at this link http://ankisrs.net/.
Choose the version depending on your Operative System (Windows, Linux, Mac OSX, etc,), download the file, and install the program.
The installation is different for each Operative System, in most cases, like Windows, just double-click on the file you downloaded and follow the application instructions.

Step 2 – Download Anki FlashCards Decks

Now that you have Anki installed go where you prefer: this website or Glyphstudy File Section and download the decks you want.
Every deck is a .zip file, a compressed archive, that should be uncompressed before you can use it.
Save the file where you keep your decks, a dedicated directory could be a good idea, but in any case take note where you save it.

Step 3 – Expand the downloaded .zip file

Locate on you hard-disk the file you downloaded, for example cmch1ex.zip, select the file and unzip it (also in this case the instructions could be different depending on your OS, on Windows just select the file and press the mouse right-button, you should see a menu with a voice that permits you to expand the archive).
Once expanded you should see a directory with the same name of the .zip file (in our example the file was cmch1ex.zip so the directory sould be cmch1ex ) with the following contents:

cmch1ex
├── facts
├── README.html
├── shared.anki
├── shared.media
│   ├── cmch1ex_000b.png
│   ├── cmch1ex_000f.png
│   ├── cmch1ex_001b.png
│   ├── cmch1ex_001f.png
│   ├── cmch1ex_010b.png
│   ├── cmch1ex_010f.png
│
│    (....)
│
│   ├── cmch1ex_300f.png
│   ├── cmch1ex_301b.png
│   ├── cmch1ex_301f.png
│   ├── cmch1ex_310b.png
│   ├── cmch1ex_310f.png
│   ├── cmch1ex_311b.png
│   ├── cmch1ex_311f.png
│   ├── cmch1ex_320b.png
│   ├── cmch1ex_320f.png
│   ├── cmch1ex_321b.png
│   └── cmch1ex_321f.png
└── version

You can see that there is a shared.anki file which contains the deck and a shared.media sub-directory containing the images used by the cards.

Step 4 – Rename the Deck

This step is not strictly necessary, but it could be useful doing it.
You saw that the deck is named “shared“, this happened because the zip was produced with Anki Export function that uses this name for each deck exported.
This will be also the name that you will see inside Anki, and if you want to use all the decks prepared for Collier&Manley 2012 Group, having a lot of decks all named “shared” it not very handy so let’s rename the deck.
You can rename the deck as you prefer, the only thing you must remember is that the .anki file and the .media sub-directory must have exactly the same name, for example these are correct:

cmch1ex/
├── Chapter1Ex1.anki
├── Chapter1Ex1.media
├── facts
├── README.html
└── version

cmch1ex/
├── ch1ex1.anki
├── ch1ex1.media
├── facts
├── README.html
└── version

This is wrong:

cmch1ex/
├── Chapter1Ex1.anki
├── ch1ex1.media
├── facts
├── README.html
└── version

Step 5 – Use Anki to open the deck

Now everything is ready, start your Anki program, select the File->Open menu and, in the application “Open Deck” window, locate the directory created at the previous step, select the .anki file and enjoy your new deck.

If something is not clear or you encounter any difficulty don’t hesitate to contact me on GlyphStudy or leave a reply here.