Import and export decks (Anki, CSV, text)

Bring in an Anki .apkg deck with its review history, or cards from a CSV or text file. Export a deck for Anki or as a CSV file.

You can move cards into Prior from Anki or from a spreadsheet, and take a deck out again.

#Import an Anki deck

What comes across:

• Decks. Anki names such as Biology::Cells become a deck inside a deck. Nesting deeper than 6 levels is folded into the last level. When a deck of the same name already sits in the same place, the imported cards join it.
• Cards. Basic, Basic (and reversed card), Cloze, type-in-the-answer and Image Occlusion notes keep their type. Any other note type uses its first field as the front and the rest as the back.
• Tags, flags and suspended cards are kept. Buried cards arrive as normal cards.
• Images are copied. Sounds are not, and the summary tells you how many were skipped.
• Your review history. It is imported, so your cards keep the schedule you built in Anki.

A file saved in Anki's newest format is refused with a hint: export again with Support older Anki versions ticked, or as Anki Collection Package (legacy).

#Import from text or CSV

One card per line, with the front, the back and the tags. Prior detects whether the columns are separated by tabs, semicolons, commas or pipes, and reads quoted fields that contain separators or line breaks.

front,back,tags,type
Capital of France,Paris,geography,basic
"The {{c1::heart}} pumps blood",,biology,cloze

• A first line of field names (front, back, tags, type, deck, and their French, Spanish, German and Portuguese words) lets the columns come in any order. The type column can say basic, reversed, cloze or typed.
• Without a first line, the columns are front and back, and when there are three or more, the last one holds the tags. Separate tags with spaces, commas or semicolons.
• A front that contains {{c1::...}} becomes a cloze card, and the second column is its extra text.
• Anki's header lines are understood, like #separator:tab and #html:true, which turns HTML into Markdown.
• A line with no front, or no back (except for a cloze card), is skipped and counted.

#Export a deck

Open the deck, choose More, then:

• Export for Anki (.apkg): a file Anki can open. It holds the deck and its subdecks, with full names like Biology::Cells, your tags, flags, suspended cards, images, the complete review history and the state of each card, so you can carry on studying in Anki. Buried cards are not included, because burying only lasts a day. Image occlusion cards become basic cards with the picture on the front and the labels on the back, and Prior tells you so.
• Export as CSV: a comma-separated file with the columns front, back, tags and type, which spreadsheets and the importer above can read. Image occlusion cards keep only their title.

Prior then shows how many cards were exported.

#Good to know

• Both exports cover one deck at a time. For everything in your account, including your decks, cards and answers as files, use Export your data.
• To give a deck to someone else, a link is simpler than a file: see Share a deck with a link.

Updated 5 November 2026