Duplicates being created for some reason?

[knight]

I ran the duplicate tool and also tried to search the FAQ and support…
I did see one topic that seemed to have a similar issue:

Weird "duplicated" cards making studying impossible (FIXED)

There are duplicates being created in my decks which are not detected by anki and also are linked to each other (as in if I delete one, they both get deleted). They are actual duplicates in that when I study I will see both identical cards separately when learning. And I can suspend one but not the other even though if I delete one it deletes them both. However, anki does not detect them as duplicates. These identical cards share the same ankihub ID and all areas of the card are identical. They…

This is I’m afraid of doing anything without making a backup of my deck since i did change some text fields of cards (added ::*** to some questions or just made some of them harder)

also I’m really afraid of losing my progress

can someone help me out here?

Edit:
I’ll admit i might be using the find duplicate tool incorrectly… I tried both choosing cloze and … but no duplicates were found so i don’t know what’s what and this is kind of frustrating

[Brian_BH]

Hello,

First things first: have you made a backup yet (to be safe)?

Additionally, have you used the ‘check database’ tool as suggested in the thread to which you linked?

[knight]

So i saw i can make a backup and i can also export the deck

Which is better?

I didn’t see the check datebase but I’ll try it out once i figure our how to properly backup the deck

Appreciate the help!

[Brian_BH]

A backup is typically meant for your own use, whereas exporting the deck is typically meant so that you can send it to others, share the file, host or save it to a drive, etc.

Neither is better or worse, really. Both have their uses.

[knight]

So the backup will also keep al the changes i made etc?

I ask because the backup literally takes 1 second while the export took hours when also including the media

Once again thx for help!

[Brian_BH]

Yep, a backup is essentially a ‘snapshot’ of your current collection. Hence why it’s quicker; it’s just capturing what your collection looks like at a given time so that you can, potentially, restore to that if you like.

Whereas exporting requires actually packing, and organizing, and distributing, all of the files (especially media) involved there for distribution. That takes significantly longer as a result. An export shouldn’t take hours, but it can likely take a few-to-several minutes depending on the size of your collection and the speed of your machine.

Happy to help anytime.