Excluding specific cards from deck

[xinshou]

Hello,

I am incredibly frustrated after literally spending days trying to figure this out. I am studying the premade HSK decks. Sometimes I come across a word from a higher level that I want to include in my current SRS study. Why on earth can’t I enable a higher level deck, then deselect all the cards except for the ones I currently want to use?

I do not want to create a custom deck where I have repeats when I enable the full HSK deck later.

This seems like a common use case and I’m about to abandon Pleco altogether. Any insights are greatly appreciated.

 

[mikelove]

Sorry for the frustration. Pleco works differently from a lot of flashcard systems in that a single card can belong to multiple decks (which we call 'categories') at the same time, the theory being that if you've already learned what 你好 means in one deck, the score history from that ought to apply in every other deck, rather than having it start over from scratch in each one.

So my suggestion for this would be that you create a new category just for 'extra cards I want to include in tests,' add any cards that match this description to that category ('copy' command in Organize), and include that category in tests along with your chosen HSK levels. Since each card has just that single score record, it will treat this card as already studied even if you later enable the HSK level that it's part of.

 

[xinshou]

Thank you so much for the very fast reply.

Just to make sure I understand: I can create a custom category with cards I want to study from other HSK levels (or even off-list words) and include the custom category in my studies. When I enable more HSK categories as I continue with Chinese, any SRS progress of words from the custom category will automatically apply to the newly enabled HSK category? I was finding conflicting information regarding what would happen if I created a new category with cards from another category, but it sounds like Pleco recognizes the progress regardless of what category a card is in?

Related use case: I downloaded a deck that contained just the new words from HSK 3.0 so I didn’t have to start over with most of the same words from the old HSK 2.0 I have already learned. It sounds like this was not necessary? I could have just enabled the full set of HSK 3.0 cards and Pleco would only have shown me cards that didn’t have existing SRS progress as new, while respecting the existing SRS progress of my overlapping prior HSK 2.0 category?

Thanks again!

 

[mikelove]

Correct on both counts - your progress will be retained even if you later review a card in a new HSK category or if you review an HSK 3 list after previously learning HSK 2. The one exception would be if the cards were imported as duplicates ('duplicate handling' in the import screen set to 'allow', which it's not set to by default) because in that case you would have two separate cards.

 

[xinshou]

Great, thank you! If this specific information is in the documentation, I missed it. I’ve purchased several add-ons, so it’s great I can stay in the Pleco ecosystem.

 

[mikelove]

Sorry, it's in basic concepts in the flashcard section:

Category: A label which can be applied to groups of flashcards in order to organize them, like putting physical flashcards in a specific “deck” or “box”. A flashcard can belong to an unlimited number of categories. You can create / delete / reorganize categories in the Organize Cards screen. Categories can be organized hierarchically, with categories grouped under other categories, so that you could have, say, a top-level category for a particular textbook with child categories underneath it for each chapter of that textbook.

You can use categories to organize flashcards in whatever way you like; for example, creating one category for each chapter in a textbook, so that you can easily review a specific set of chapters for a class exam. Since a flashcard can belong to more than one category, categories can also be used to remind yourself of particular details about a card; for example, you could create a category for words that you’re not sure about the meaning of and need to ask a teacher/friend for help with, or one for words that people have told you are slang, or are only used in a particular region.