Can I study my cards in a particular order?
New cards
By default, new cards are introduced by their due number. If you open the Browse screen and look at the due column, you'll see new cards have numbers like New #1, New #2, and so on. Anki will show the card with the smallest due number first. If you'd like to change the order, you can select one or more cards, then use the Reposition action in the Cards menu.
The number of new cards that will be introduced each day depends on the daily limits you've set in the deck options.
When you have multiple cards for a note (for example, both forward->backward and backward->forward cards, or multiple cloze deletions on a note), those cards will have the same new number, and you may want those cards to be shown on different days, or spaced apart, or shown one after the other depending on your preferences.
- To have the cards shown on different days, enable burying in the deck options.
- Sibling cards are spaced apart by default.
- To have the cards shown next to each other, enable the v3 scheduler, and then change the sort order in the deck options, in the display order section.
Reviews
Because Anki is designed to show you cards again when you're about to forget them, it is not possible to preserve the original order when cards come up again for review, as the cards may have been scheduled on different days. For this reason, you should design your cards so that they do not rely on context or certain other cards having been seen first, or you'll find it difficult to review them.
If you have a backlog of reviews, there is some flexibility in the order review cards are presented. After enabling the v3 scheduler, please see the display options in the deck's options.
While the regular review process will not show cards in order, you can use the Browse screen to sort your cards in a particular order, and then use the Preview button to go through the cards in that order. This bypasses Anki's usual learning process, and will not alter the scheduling of the cards or their review history.