Add Items

For an introduction on how to add items, see this screencast.

If the window is mostly blank, you have accidentally hidden the middle area. Move your mouse to the line near the top of the window and the cursor will change. Drag down. If you are missing the status area down the bottom, move your mouse to the bottom of the window and drag up.

Required and unique fields

By default, Anki won't let you add items if certain fields are blank, or if they contain the same information as in another card. Yellow fields indicate fields that are blank, and red fields indicate fields which duplicate information. You can change what Anki will complain about in the ModelProperties#Fields dialog.

Cards

Anki allows you to generate different "cards" for the data you put in - for example, you might want to quiz yourself from city to country and country to city when reviewing capital cities of the world. Click the cards button on the top right to change this.

Built in Tags

Separate tags with spaces.

Reading generation

Anki automatically generates a reading when you input Japanese or Chinese text. If Anki can't work out which reading is correct, it will display multiple readings. Double click the correct one to remove the others.

Latex

LaTeX can be used to input mathematical notation, as well as other symbols (e.g. chemical formulas, musical notation, etc.)

The most general way to input LaTeX content is to surround it with [latex][/latex] tags. (This can be quickly done by selecting this content and clicking on the button, or using a keyboard shortcut.) For example, entering the following on the front of an Anki flashcard

Does [latex]\begin{math}\sum_{k = 1}^{\infty}\frac{1}{k}\end{math}[/latex] converge?

will produce this when the flashcard is viewed:

The formula in the example above is called a text formula, because it is displayed right within the non-mathematical text. In contrast, the following example shows a displayed formula:

Does the sum below converge?

[latex]\begin{displaymath}\sum_{k = 1}^{\infty}\frac{1}{k}\end{displaymath}[/latex]

Text formulas and display formulas are the most common type of LaTeX expressions, so Anki provides abbreviated versions of them. Expressions of the form [latex]\begin{math}...\end{math}[/latex] can be shortened to [$]...[/$], and expressions of the form [latex]\begin{displaymath}...\end{displaymath}[/latex] can be shortened to [$$]...[/$$]. For example, the two LaTeX snippets shown before are equivalent to

Does [$]\sum_{k = 1}^{\infty}\frac{1}{k}[/$] converge?

and

Does the sum below converge?

[$$]\sum_{k = 1}^{\infty}\frac{1}{k}[/$$]

respectively. Clicking on the button wraps the selected text with [$][/$] tags, and clicking on the button does the same thing for [$$][/$$] tags. (Alternatively, you can use keyboard shortcuts).

But LaTeX is not limited to typesetting mathematical expressions! Below is an advanced example that uses LaTeX to typeset an excerpt from a musical score:

[latex]
\begin{music} 
\parindent10mm
\instrumentnumber{1}
\generalmeter{\meterfrac44}
\startextract
\Notes\ibu0f0\qb0{cge}\tbu0\qb0g\en
\endextract
\end{music}
[/latex]

It will look like this when the card is viewed:

(NB: This last example requires the special LaTeX style package musixtex.sty, which in turn requires the Configure latex plugin for Anki, suitably customized to load musixtex.sty.)

Shortcuts

(NB: On a Mac, Ctrl is the Command (⌘) key, and Alt is the Option key.)