Anki suspend vs bury: what should happen to this card?

Name the reason in one sentence. "I just saw the answer on a related card" is a timing issue. "This prompt contains a wrong definition" is a content repair. "This chapter belongs to an optional module I am not taking" is a relevance decision. If you cannot name the reason, first inspect the card and its source. Choosing a state only to escape a difficult review can hide the distinction between a broken question and information you genuinely forgot.

Burying and suspension have different return expectations in Anki. Read the current studying and search documentation for the precise controls in your version. Burying is used for temporary withholding, including sibling behavior, while suspension keeps a card out of ordinary study until deliberately restored. Neither action should be confused with deleting a note. Know which level an action affects, especially when one note generates several cards.

A useful decision record contains the card's topic, the reason, and the return condition. For example: "ambiguous abbreviation; suspended for source check; restore after the abbreviation is defined." That is much more actionable than an unexplained pile of hidden cards. Keep the record lightweight by using an organization method you already understand. You do not need a separate database, but you do need a way to distinguish planned maintenance from forgotten material.

First, a language learner has just answered a recognition card and does not want its production sibling to benefit from an immediate cue. That is a visibility and timing issue. Inspect the sibling controls and whether the card is buried. The intent is not to remove the vocabulary item from the learning plan. The learner wants a later attempt to measure more independent recall, and should keep both directions if both serve a useful objective.

Second, a chemistry student encounters a prompt whose answer contradicts the course source. Repeatedly reviewing the disputed wording is unhelpful. The student sets the item aside for a deliberate correction and records the relevant source. Once repaired, they inspect any sibling cards generated from the same note. A change to a shared field can affect more than the single card that first exposed the error. Returning the material should follow the repair, not an arbitrary desire to clear hidden items.

Third, a student completes an optional module and decides it does not belong in the current term's active review. That is a scope choice. Preserving the material outside the active queue can be useful if they may need it later, but the return condition differs from a one-day delay. The student should document the choice and verify the affected scope. None of these scenarios calls automatically for deletion, a reset to new, or a migration to another application.

Inspect a small sample in Browse after the action. Use documented searches such as is:suspended and is:buried when appropriate. If you need to distinguish manually buried cards from buried siblings, read the more specific state searches. Confirm the card identity, note, and deck. A search result gives you evidence of state; it does not by itself show why someone chose that state, so keep your maintenance reason visible as well.

Be especially careful with bulk selections. A selected note and a selected card are not always interchangeable because notes can generate several cards. Before applying an action to a large group, inspect what the current browser mode and selection represent. If the consequence is unclear, test on a small, recoverable example. Save a backup before major maintenance. The few minutes spent checking scope are preferable to reconstructing why unrelated course material left the active queue.

Imagine the chemistry student intended to withhold one incorrect prompt but selected an entire note with multiple generated cards. That may be appropriate if all share the wrong field, or excessive if one direction alone needs work. The correct next step is to inspect the affected cards and decide deliberately. Do not immediately restore everything without reviewing the error. Verification should connect the action to its purpose rather than treating any change in the total as success.

Read the original reason and confirm it has been resolved. A repaired card should now have a clear prompt, a defensible answer, and enough context to attempt it. A temporarily irrelevant deck should have a current reason to return. A card withheld to avoid an immediate cue should be assessed under the timing behavior you intended. Restoration is another study-planning decision, not simply the opposite button press.

For a large suspended group, consider the workload that return will expose. Restoring relevance does not create unlimited review time. Inspect the card states and your current capacity before returning everything at once. Keep new-card intake and existing due work in view. A maintenance session can produce a sudden visible queue even if no new content was added. Record that event so you do not later mistake it for an unexplained scheduling failure.

Use a bounded restoration test if the material has been inactive for a long time. Review representative cards, check that sources and media still make sense, and repair obsolete content. If a question refers to an old syllabus or a missing lecture image, resolve that dependency first. The aim is not to recover every old card at any cost. It is to restore useful learning tasks whose scope and workload you can justify today.

Keep Anki when state controls, established review history, and native note behavior help you maintain a large personal collection. A confusing state is usually a reason to inspect the card and workflow before replacing the system. You may only need a clearer maintenance convention, a smaller active scope, or a better question. Those improvements can be made within the existing collection while preserving the information that is already useful.

A separate workspace can assist with the source-checking step. For example, you can take a permitted explanation into Elly and draft a more precise question before returning to the suspended Anki note. An account and current AI allowances apply. Check the draft against the authoritative source. A text import does not transfer Anki suspension state, buried relationships, images, templates, or scheduling, so it should not be presented as a faithful copy of the active and inactive collection.

Before you close the maintenance session, ask whether every hidden group has a reason and a return condition. Confirm that you can find a representative example using the relevant search. If the answer is no, improve the organization before hiding more cards. A healthy collection does not require every card to be active at once. It does require intentional decisions that remain understandable after the pressure of today's review session has passed.