Import and export

Import from Pleco

Bring your Pleco flashcards into Lymi with their pinyin, definitions and categories. You choose whether you learn simplified or traditional characters, and the other form stays on the card. Pleco itself is not changed.

Import in four steps

1
Export from Pleco
In Pleco’s menu, under Flashcards, choose Import / Export, then Export Cards. Set these options:
- File format: Text File. Lymi does not read Pleco’s XML file.
- Text encoding: UTF-8.
- Character set: Both, so each card keeps its simplified and traditional forms.
- Include data: Categories, Card definitions and Dictionary definitions.
Press Export now and save the .txt file where you can open it from the browser you use Lymi in.
Open the import in Lymi
In Lymi, open Settings from the menu under your name, and under Import choose Pleco. Choose the file, or drop it on the page.
Check what comes across
Lymi reads the file and shows what it found: how many cards, which categories become tags, and which words you already have. Check how a card will look. The simplified form is the term and the traditional form is a line in its notes. To learn traditional characters, press Change fields and make Traditional the term.
Import
Press Import. Lymi writes the cards on its server, so you can close the app. When it finishes, the deck is in Library and the import is listed in Activity.

What comes across

Deck: Every card goes into one new Chinese deck called Pleco flashcards. You can rename it afterwards.
Characters: The form you choose is the term. The other form is a line in the card’s notes, unless both are written the same, as 你好 is.
Pinyin: It becomes the card’s Reading. Pleco writes tone numbers, as in ni3hao3, and Lymi stores them as tone marks, nǐhǎo. The // Pleco puts inside a word you can split, as in kai1//xue2, is left out.
Definitions: Your own definition or the dictionary’s becomes the meaning. A link to another word keeps the word it shows, and Pleco’s bold and colour become plain text.
Categories: Each category becomes a tag. A category inside another keeps its path, as in HSK 1/Verbs. A card you filed in several categories comes in once, with every tag.

What stays behind

Scores and review history. Pleco’s text file holds neither, so every card starts as new and Insights shows no history from Pleco.
Audio. Lymi makes its own pronunciation from the characters.
Dictionary entries. A card keeps the definition Pleco exported, not a link back to the dictionary.
Very long text. A definition longer than a card holds moves to its notes. The preview counts every card with text that was cut or moved.

Your streak and today’s goal

An import adds no reviews, so it never counts toward today’s goal and never changes your streak.

Words you already have

If a word is already in your Chinese decks with the same pinyin, the import skips it and keeps your card. A word with two readings, such as 行 háng and 行 xíng, stays two cards. The preview lists the words it will skip and the decks they are in.

Importing the same file again

Export again and import the new file, and Lymi recognises the cards it already brought across by their characters and pinyin. It adds no copies. It adds cards that are new in Pleco, and fills a field on a card only if that field is empty in Lymi, so your edits stay.

Undo an import

Open Activity, choose the import and press Archive import. Every card the import added is archived, and so is the deck if it has no other cards. Restore brings back exactly those. Nothing is deleted.

If something goes wrong

The file is too large

Lymi imports Pleco files up to 24 MB. Dictionary definitions make a file much larger, so export one category at a time, or export again without Dictionary definitions.

Lymi can’t read the file

Export again from Pleco as a Text File in UTF-8 and choose the .txt file. An XML file cannot be imported.

The upload stopped

Try again on a steadier connection and keep Lymi open until the upload finishes. After that you can close it.