How do I upload my flashcards to NativShark?

Anki flashcards and Japanese in spreadsheets can be transferred to NativShark if you prefer to study them that way.

This article will show you how to mass upload your flashcards into the Nativshark system.

If you don't have a flashcard deck that can be converted to a .txt or .csv file, you are likely better off adding cards directly into NativShark instead.

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If you are studying with native materials and simply want to create flashcards as you go:

Go to your flashcard decks in NativShark, create a new custom deck if needed, and then select the custom deck you want to add a card to.

You will see a button called "Create Card" which you can press to enter information for a new card.

Once the information is filled in, save the card and make as many as you want.

To study with the deck, hit "Activate" which can be found in the "Manage" dropdown when the deck is selected.

You can add flashcards to the deck at any time before or after activating the deck.

If you're taking your deck from Anki directly, start with Part One.

If you already have a .txt or .csv file, start with Part Two.

This article is written to be done on a computer.

Part One: Export your Anki deck to a .txt file

1. Go to "File" in the Anki desktop app and hit "Export.”

2. Change "Export Format" to "Notes in Plain Text (*.txt)"

2a. Change "Include" to what deck you want to export. Note that you'll want to do this instead of choosing "All decks" in case there are any differences in formatting.

2b. Uncheck the two boxes that say "Include tags" and "Include HTML and media references" It should look like this when you finish these steps:

3. Click the Export button as shown in the previous step and choose a place to save your file.

You now have your file exported as something we can put in Google Sheets

Part Two: Upload your anki.txt into Google Sheets

1. Open up Google Sheets in your browser and make a new Google Sheet.

2. Click on "File" and hit "Import."

3. Click on the "Upload" tab on this screen and drag your file into the box shown.

4. When it's done uploading, you'll see the below screen. Click on "Replace current sheet" instead of the default "Create new spreadsheet," then "Import data.”

And now, a slight detour to NativShark to grab the example CSV we need.

5. Go to https://www.nativshark.com/tools/flashcards and hit "Create Custom Deck" if you haven't done so already.

Alternatively, select the deck that you want to upload the flashcards to if you already have one made.

6. Click on "Import from CSV" in the bottom right corner.

7. Click the link that says "Click here" and you'll download the format and an example we need to upload our custom decks.

Back to our Google sheet now that we have that file.

8. Like we did with our other file, we want to import this into a new sheet. Check out steps 2 and 3 of this part and do the same thing. Stop at step 4, as we want to select "Insert new sheet(s)" here.

You should be moved into the new sheet automatically, but just in case, look at the bottom of the screen and click on the second tab here. It should be whatever you named your anki file.

9. Rearrange your data to the order of the columns highlighted in blue in the below image. It must be in the order of these columns.

If you have two columns for a focus word, and separate column for the kana reading of it, you'll have to do some magic in order to make it work with the formatting of furigana. It will still need some manual editing once it's uploaded, but the following side step will do most of the legwork for you.

Part 2a (Optional) - Combine target word and kana reading field

Skip this step if you already had your kana formatted like this in a single box:

1. Locate your target word and your kana reading columns. In this example, it is column A and B.

2. Drag an empty column over to column C, or right click column C and click "Insert 1 left" to make an empty column there.

3. Click on square C2 and paste this formula in:
=CONCATENATE(A2,"[",B2,"]")

and it should look like this when you hit enter or click away:

4. Make sure you have the box you just made highlighted and then click on that small square at the bottom right corner.

Drag it down your entire list to copy this formula for all the cards in your deck.

It should look something like this when you finish this step:

5. Now, click on the C at the top to highlight this entire column. Press control + C to copy it.

6. Go to an empty column and click on the top letter of it. Press Command/Control + Shift + and V, or right-click the letter, go to "Paste Special" and hit "Paste values only." Your new column should look similar to this.

7. Delete the three columns containing your target word, kana reading, and the formula we pasted into it.

8. Drag the column we just pasted all the way to the left, making it into column A. It will look something like this now.

Part 2a over!

10. Drag and drop to arrange your columns so they match this exact order:

target_word
definition
sentencesource
translationalternate_translationnote

11. Then rename your columns to be the names listed above, or go to the other sheet and copy and paste to make it easy.

Note that if there are any blanks in target_word, definition, or sentence, the upload will fail. Make sure all blanks are filled in before attempting to upload your CSV.

Any content that is outside of these fields will cause an error in the upload.

In other words, if your sheet looks like this (the leftover columns H and I from the Anki upload) then it will cause an error. These must be deleted before downloading the sheet.

Your CSV is now formatted correctly and we're all set there! All we need to do is...

12. Download it by clicking "File," "Download," then "Comma-separated values (.csv, current sheet)"

Part Three: Upload your CSV

1. Navigate to https://www.nativshark.com/tools/flashcards and click on the custom deck you would like to add cards to.

You can create a deck by hitting "Create Custom Deck" on the left under "Customer Decks".

1a. Click on "Import from CSV" in the bottom right.

2. Click on "Choose File" and locate the file we got from the Google Sheet, then click "Upload CSV".

3. Your deck is now being uploaded! You'll get an email when it's done.

All that's left to do now is hit "Activate Deck", choose how many new cards you want to do per day, and then start studying once the upload is done!

Happy studies ^^

Troubleshooting

Make sure all your columns are lined up correctly and the names are exactly these:

target_word
definition
sentence
source
translation
alternate_translationnote

Next, make sure there are absolutely no blanks in any of columns A, B, and C. An easy way to do this is using the filter tool in Google Sheets.

To use the filter tool to check for blanks:
1. Highlight columns A, B, and C.

2. Click on "Data" and hit "Create a filter.”

3. Click on the three lines in each box and see if you find a box that says "(Blanks)." In this example, we have a blank in column B.

4. Click "clear" and then check "(Blanks)" so that is the only box checked. Then hit OK.

5. The rows that are left after this filter are our culprits. Fill them in with the necessary info, then repeat steps 3 and 4 to check the other columns.

6. Once you have checked all columns for blanks, you can go to "Data" and hit "Turn off filter.”

Download the sheet again and reupload that to NativShark.

Also remember that all extra fields that are outside of the following will cause the upload to have an error.

target_worddefinition
sentence
source
translationalternate_translationnote

In other words, if your sheet looks like this (extra columns H and I are filled in) then it will cause an error. These must be deleted before downloading the deck.

If it still isn't working, feel free to come and ask in #nativshark-tools-help in our Discord community!