Before you can edit a template in Anki, it helps to know what a field, note, note type, and card type actually are. This is the part of Anki that trips up newcomers the most, but once it clicks, you'll understand why editing a template just once updates every single card that uses it. Let's walk through a simple example.
Field — a labeled input box
Say you have a card with "apple" on the front and "the round red fruit" on the back. Let's give each of those a name: the box holding "apple" is called Word, and the box holding "the round red fruit" is called Meaning. A labeled input box like this is what Anki calls a field.
Fields exist because you're going to make a lot of flashcards, not just one. Naming each box — one for the word, one for the meaning — means that no matter how many cards you end up with, it's always clear which piece of text belongs where.
A login form is a good comparison: there's a box for your username and a box for your password. Each box is a field, the name attached to it (Username, Password) is the field name, and whatever you type into it is the field's content.
Note — a field, filled in
Fill the Word field with "apple" and the Meaning field with "the round red fruit," and you've created one note. Fill another Word/Meaning pair with "banana" and "a long yellow fruit," and you now have two notes. It's tempting to think this step makes a card, but what you've actually created is a note — not a card.
Note Type — the blueprint for your fields
The two notes above hold different content ("apple / the round red fruit" vs. "banana / a long yellow fruit"), but they share something: both use the same field layout — Word plus Meaning. Lifting that field layout out on its own, to reuse as a blueprint, is what Anki calls a note type. Once you define a note type with "Word and Meaning," you can create as many notes as you like that follow it.
A note type is really just a collection of fields. So Note Type A might stay "Word + Meaning," while Note Type B adds an "Example sentence" field to become "Word + Meaning + Example sentence."
Card Type — the blueprint for laying fields onto a card
Once you fill in a note type's fields, you can generate an actual card from it — but first you need to decide which fields go on the front and which go on the back. A plan like "show the Word field on the front, and the Meaning and Example sentence fields on the back" is exactly what Anki calls a card type (also called a template).
Just like note types, you can define more than one card type. Card Type A might put "Word on the front, Meaning on the back," while Card Type B does the opposite: "Meaning on the front, Word on the back."
Inside a card type, a field is written wrapped in double curly
braces, like {{Word}}. That doesn't mean "display the
literal text Word" — it means "display whatever content is in the Word
field." So if the front template contains {{Word}}, every
note generates a card that shows that note's own Word content ("apple",
"banana", …).
Put together, the chain runs like this: choosing a note type means choosing a field layout; filling that layout in creates a note; and the moment a note exists, Anki automatically builds cards from it according to that note type's card types.
Why such a complicated structure?
If content were written directly onto cards, then wanting to "swap front and
back" (say, switching from recognizing the word to recalling it from the
meaning) would mean opening and editing a hundred cards one by one. In Anki, you
only need to edit a single card type. Change the front template
from {{Word}} to {{Meaning}} and the back from
{{Meaning}} to {{Word}}, and every card that uses that
note type updates instantly — whether there are 100 of them or 10,000. One edit,
done.
If you want to practice both directions, just create two card types. With one that goes "Word front → Meaning back" and another that goes "Meaning front → Word back," entering a single note automatically produces two cards. Anki's built-in "Basic (and reversed card)" note type is exactly this setup.
In other words, typing "apple" into the Word field and "the round red fruit" into the Meaning field — just once — is enough to generate both a card that shows the word and asks for the meaning, and a card that shows the meaning and asks for the word.
Summary — what to edit for what you want to change
- To change a card's content → edit the note. Changing a note's field content updates every card generated from that note.
- To change a card's look or layout (font, color, which field goes where) → edit the card type (template). Every card sharing that note type changes at once.
The template of a card type is exactly what ankieditor edits. You paste in
the Front Template, Back Template, and Styling code from Anki's Card Types
screen, style it by clicking, and paste it back — so whatever you change here
applies to every card that uses that note type. Now you also know why
{{Field}} shows up as a protected pill in the editor: it isn't
literal text, it's "the spot where the field's content will appear."