Some of my mature cards are scheduled to come up in 2–3 months, but my exam is in about 1.5 months. I want to make sure every card gets reviewed before the exam. I’m wondering if changing the maximum interval is enough, or if I need to do something else
I’ll help you make sure all your cards are reviewed before your exam! Let me search for relevant information to provide you with the best answer.
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I didn’t find specific information about reviewing ahead for exams, so let me search for more specific information about filtered decks and cramming:
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For your exam preparation with Anki, there are a few strategies to ensure all your cards are reviewed before your exam in 1.5 months, even if some are currently scheduled beyond that timeframe:
Using Filtered Decks (Recommended Solution)
The most effective approach is to create a filtered deck to review cards scheduled beyond your exam date:
- In Anki, select Tools > Create Filtered Deck
- Set up a search like:
prop:due>45 prop:due<90(assuming 45 days is your exam time) - This will gather all cards due between 45-90 days from now
- Study these cards in the filtered deck
When you review cards in a filtered deck ahead of their scheduled time, Anki uses a special algorithm that considers how early you’re reviewing. Cards that were almost due will receive a new delay similar to what they would have gotten if reviewed on time, while cards reviewed very early will have intervals closer to their previous delay.
Alternative Approaches
Temporarily Adjust Maximum Interval
You could temporarily change your deck options:
- Go to Deck Options
- Under the Reviews tab, reduce the Maximum Interval to 45 days (or however many days until your exam)
- This will cap all future reviews to be no more than 45 days away
- Remember to change this back after your exam!
However, this approach is less ideal as it might disrupt your long-term learning schedule and affects all future reviews.
Use the “Forget” Feature
For selected cards that are scheduled too far in the future:
- Browse your collection
- Find cards due after your exam date
- Select them and choose Cards > Forget
- This moves them to the new card queue so you can relearn them before your exam
Important Notes
- Avoid repeatedly using “review ahead” as it provides diminishing returns for mature cards
- For important exams, creating a filtered deck is usually the most balanced approach
- Remember that cramming right before an exam is less effective than spaced repetition over time
Would you like me to provide more specific guidance on creating an effective filtered deck for your exam preparation?
Hello,
I would be happy to help. 
The maximum interval won’t be related, or useful, for this unfortunately.
For new cards:
If you want to see each card before your exam date, you can take the number of cards you need to learn, divided by the number of days you have, and that will equal the number of new cards per day you need to review.
So if you have 1,000 cards and 20 days, you would need to learn 50 new cards per day.
Nothing much to it, other than arithmetic. Anki otherwise isn’t really set up to do this automatically, tbh.
Of course, you might want to end a few days, or weeks, before your exam so you might adjust the above numbers slightly.
For review cards:
There is, unfortunately, no way for Anki to make you see all of the cards again before your exam date automatically. This really comes down to the app being written for long-term retention, rather than exam dates.
If you really want to, you can create a filtered deck to force review before an exam date. In most cases this isn’t usually recommended, but you can do it if you’d like. You would just create a filtered deck and select whichever deck, or tags, you want to review and that’s about that.
Please let me know if that answers your question, and if there’s anything else I can help with.
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Thanks for the suggestion! I’m not very familiar with filtered decks, so could you please explain how exactly that would help in my case? Like, will it reschedule the cards?
I’ve already lost my cards once before, so I’m a bit nervous about doing anything that might mess things up again
Hi,
When creating a filtered deck, you can choose what cards will be on it to be studied. It’s basically a way of studying the cards you want right away.
So what does a filtered deck mean? You will take specific cards from their home deck — the AnKing Step Deck, for example — and put them in a temporary deck just for studying them.
It will help in your case because you can review the cards relevant to your exam any time you want.
Will it reschedule cards?
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If you leave this box checked, the cards of the filtered deck will follow the rules of their home decks. So when you get a card wrong, it will appear again using the interval you are used to, and when you get a card right, it will increase its interval the same way you’re used to, and then return to its home deck.
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If you leave it unchecked, you can choose any intervals you want for your reviews in that deck, and it will not change anything in your cards’ intervals. For the example in the image below, when I hit Again, the card will be back in 10 minutes. If I hit Hard, it will be back in 1 hour; if I hit Good, it will be back in one day; and if I hit Easy (by default), the card will return to its home deck like nothing has happened (intervals do not get changed).
This tutorial can help you create a filtered deck: How to Build a Custom-Filtered Deck
Here you can learn more about it: Filtered Decks - Anki Manual
Let me know if there are any questions about it!
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