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How to Search Across All Your Decks in Anki: The Complete Guide

You've got five decks. Anatomy, Physiology, Pathology, Pharmacology, and a personal deck from your professor's lectures. You want to search for everything related to "mitral valve" across all of them. But when you open the browser, it only seems to show cards from whatever deck you have selected. Where's the "search all" button?

It exists. It's just not obvious. Here's exactly how to search across your entire Anki collection, filter by specific decks, and set up custom study sessions that pull from multiple decks at once.

The Card Browser: Your Search Engine

The card browser is where all searching happens in Anki. Open it with Browse from the main screen, or use the keyboard shortcut B from anywhere in Anki.

When the browser opens, you'll see a sidebar on the left with your decks listed. Here's the key thing most people miss: at the top of that sidebar, there's an option that says the current deck name or a filter. Click on the top-most level to search your entire collection.

Alternatively, and this is the faster method: just clear the search bar at the top of the browser and type your search term. By default, the browser searches your entire collection unless you've added a deck filter. If you type mitral valve in the search bar with no other filters, Anki will find every card in every deck that contains those words.

The Deck Sidebar Trick

In the browser sidebar, you'll see all your decks listed. Here's how the selection works:

  • Click a specific deck: Only shows cards from that deck
  • Click "Current Deck": Shows cards from whatever deck you were last studying
  • Click nothing (or clear the filter): Shows your entire collection

If you want to search a specific set of decks but not all of them, you need to use search syntax. More on that below.

Search Syntax for Decks

Anki's search bar accepts specific commands for filtering by deck. Here are the ones you need:

Search a specific deck

deck:Anatomy mitral valve

This finds all cards in your Anatomy deck containing "mitral valve."

Search multiple specific decks

(deck:Anatomy OR deck:Pathology) mitral valve

This searches both your Anatomy and Pathology decks for "mitral valve." The parentheses group the deck filters, and OR (must be capitalized) tells Anki to include both.

Search all decks (explicitly)

deck:* mitral valve

The asterisk is a wildcard meaning "any deck." This is the same as just typing mitral valve with no deck filter, but some people prefer being explicit.

Search decks by pattern

deck:Med* mitral valve

This searches all decks whose names start with "Med" (Medical, Medicine, Med School, etc.). Useful if you've organized your decks with a naming convention.

Search nested/sub-decks

If you use Anki's nested deck structure (like Medical::Anatomy::Upper Limb), you can search a parent deck and it includes all children:

deck:Medical mitral valve

This searches Medical and all its sub-decks.

Searching by Card Content

Beyond deck filtering, here's how to find exactly what you're looking for:

Simple text search

mitral valve

Finds any card where "mitral" AND "valve" appear somewhere in the card (front or back). Both words must be present, but they don't have to be next to each other.

Exact phrase

"mitral valve prolapse"

Quotes force an exact phrase match. Only finds cards with those three words in that exact order.

Search specific fields

Front:mitral valve

Only searches the Front field of your cards. Replace "Front" with whatever your field names are (Back, Extra, Lecture, etc.).

Exclude terms

mitral valve -stenosis

Finds cards with "mitral valve" but NOT "stenosis." The minus sign excludes.

Combine everything

(deck:Anatomy OR deck:Pathology) "mitral valve" -stenosis

Searches Anatomy and Pathology decks for the exact phrase "mitral valve" but excludes any card mentioning stenosis. This is the kind of precise filtering that makes the browser powerful.

Creating a Custom Study Session Across Decks

Sometimes you don't just want to search. You want to actually study cards from multiple decks together. Anki has a feature for this called Filtered Decks (or Custom Study).

Method 1: Filtered Deck

  1. Go to the main screen and click Create Filtered Deck (or Tools > Create Filtered Deck)
  2. In the search field, type your multi-deck query: (deck:Anatomy OR deck:Physiology) mitral
  3. Set the number of cards you want to pull (e.g., 50)
  4. Set the order (random, due date, or creation date)
  5. Click Build

Anki creates a temporary deck with cards matching your search pulled from their original decks. Study it like any other deck. When you finish or delete the filtered deck, cards return to their original decks with their updated scheduling.

This is perfect for exam prep when you need to consolidate related material from multiple courses.

Method 2: Custom Study from the Deck Screen

  1. Click on any deck
  2. Click Custom Study at the bottom
  3. Choose options like "Review ahead," "Study by card state or tag," etc.

This is more limited than filtered decks but faster for quick sessions.

Tips for Better Searching

Use the preview pane. When you click a card in the browser results, the bottom shows a preview. Scan through results quickly without opening each card.

Save your searches. If you frequently search for the same thing (like all cardiology content across decks), right-click in the browser sidebar and save the search. It shows up as a shortcut you can click anytime.

Sort results. Click the column headers in the browser (Due, Interval, Ease, etc.) to sort. Finding cards that are overdue or have low ease factors helps you identify trouble spots.

Browser keyboard shortcuts:

  • Ctrl/Cmd + F: Focus the search bar
  • Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + F: Open the search bar with the current search selected (easy to modify)
  • Enter: Preview the selected card
  • Ctrl/Cmd + E: Edit the selected card

The Quick Answer

If you just want to search everything and don't care about filters: open the browser (press B), clear whatever's in the search bar, type what you're looking for, and hit Enter. That searches your entire collection across all decks.

For fancier multi-deck searches, use (deck:Name1 OR deck:Name2) search term syntax.

For studying across decks, create a Filtered Deck with your search query.

That's it. Anki's search is powerful once you know the syntax, but the defaults make it seem like you're locked into one deck at a time. You're not.

If you're spending more time organizing and searching cards than actually studying them, SlideToAnki can generate well-tagged, properly formatted cards from your lecture slides automatically, so you can focus on the reviewing part instead of the card management part.