Help — using PSTUDY

Create an account or log in. Your My decks page lists every deck you own. Use New deck to start empty, or Import .txt to load a PSTUDY text file. Open a deck to edit items (question and answer text, optional instruction line, picture, and multiple-choice distractors for exams).

Account summarizes your decks, exams, and other activity.

Use the header links to open PstudyCommunity (public decks from others), MyCommunities (shared decks inside your organization, if you belong to one—see MyCommunities (organizations)), My assigned exams (invitations sent to your email), Import .txt, and Exams (exams you created).

Each deck has items. The description and explanation fields are the main question and answer sides; which one is shown as the prompt in practice depends on Ask for (description vs explanation) on the practice screen.

You can set Field and Topic for organisation and PstudyCommunity browsing. Share with PstudyCommunity makes a deck discoverable on the PstudyCommunity page (others copy it into their own collection; your original stays yours).

When a deck is shared, the editor header shows Draft or Checked (PstudyCommunity quality). While it is Draft, use Peer review in the toolbar (next to Create exam and Practice) to invite a reviewer by email and send the invitation from the dialog. For what Draft and Checked mean, and what reviewers can do, see PstudyCommunity quality and peer review below.

Create exam and Practice appear above the item table. Pictures upload to storage and autosave with the rest of the deck.

To combine decks you already own into one new deck, see Merging decks below.

On My decks, you can copy several decks into a single new deck without losing the originals.

Requirements. You must have at least two decks. The Merge decks button sits to the left of New deck; it stays disabled until you have two or more decks.

Steps. Press Merge decks to turn on merge mode—the button is highlighted, and a checkbox appears next to each deck. Tick every deck you want to include. The order you tick them is the order their items will appear in the new deck (all items from the first ticked deck, then all from the second, and so on). Use Clear selection to untick everything without leaving merge mode. Press Continue, enter a title for the merged deck, and confirm. When finished, PSTUDY opens the new deck in the editor.

What changes. PSTUDY creates one new deck with a fresh copy of every item (new internal IDs). Your original decks are not deleted, renamed, or edited. The merged deck starts as private (not shared). Field and Topic are copied from the first deck you ticked—you can change them in the editor. Click Merge decks again, or Done merging, to leave merge mode and hide the checkboxes.

Merging is useful after Import .txt, AI generation, or splitting work across chapters and you want one combined deck for practice or exams.

From a deck, open Practice. Choose Straight answer, Multiple choice, or Flashcard.

Straight answer and multiple choice use the same Ask for setting (description vs explanation) so you control which side of the card is the question.

Order can be normal or random. Listen reads the question aloud when that mode is on (instruction plus main line when both exist). Speak uses the microphone where your browser allows; on straight answer, optional cloud speech (when the server is configured) can favour answers that appear in the deck.

Exercise setup can be collapsed to focus on the question. After you submit, the result panel shows correct/incorrect; press Next (or Enter) to continue. Repeat mistakes appears when you finish a round with wrong answers so you can drill only those items.

While results are shown, the question image and text stay on the item you just answered so nothing jumps ahead early.

Flashcard practice is covered in the next section—flip cards, optional typing or dictation, keywords, and known/unknown filtering.

In Practice, choose Flashcard to study with a two-sided card that flips in 3D. The front is the side you are asked first; the back is the official answer. Which field is treated as the “question” still follows Ask for (description vs explanation), like straight answer—so you can show either side first depending on how you built the deck.

Before you flip, type your version of the answer in the box, or turn on Speak and dictate it. In the text box, Enter starts a new line; Shift+Enter flips the card to reveal the back. After the back is shown, Enter often moves you on—watch the short hint under the controls for the exact behaviour. With Speak on, you can choose Browser listening or Google speech when your host supports cloud recognition.

Listen (when enabled) reads the question side—instruction and main line together when both are filled in.

Optional keywords in the deck editor (comma- or semicolon-separated) mark important phrases. After you flip, keywords are highlighted on the official answer and on what you typed: you can see at a glance what you included or skipped.

The back can use several lines of text. Lines beginning with `-`, `*`, or `•` are shown as a bullet list after you reveal.

Which cards appear: you can practise All cards or only those you have not marked as known (Unknown only). The count of known cards is shown in the strip of options. “Known” is saved in this browser only (not in your account), so another device or browser starts fresh unless you mark cards there too.

Browse only is for a lighter pass: no typing or dictation—flip with the buttons, then mark Known or Not known for each card.

Speech works best in Chrome or Edge; other browsers may limit Listen or Speak.

Use Import .txt in the header (log in first). You can upload a `.txt` file, drop it on the import area, or paste from the clipboard. PSTUDY always creates a new deck containing the imported items—open it after import to rename the deck and fix anything that looks off.

What this is for. The format is the same as the classic PSTUDY desktop `.txt` export, so you can move old decks into PSTUDY Online. You can also prepare data in Excel, Google Sheets, or another spreadsheet (one row per card) and export or copy as plain text with Tab characters between columns, then save as UTF-8 `.txt`. That avoids retyping long word lists by hand.

One non-empty line = one item. Completely blank lines are ignored.

Fields are separated with the Tab key, not commas. Each line is split on Tab characters only. Commas inside your text stay part of the field. A standard comma-separated CSV from Excel will not import correctly until you convert it to tab-delimited text (for example Text (Tab delimited) in Excel, or a sheet that uses tabs when exporting).

Column order left to right (always the same): 1) Description — question / prompt side. 2) Explanation — answer side. 3–6) Multiple choice 1–4 — wrong-answer options used in multiple choice and exams (may be left empty). 7) Picture — optional image URL (`https://…`), or empty. Older desktop `.txt` files may contain a long Base64 block instead; the importer tries to recognise it. 8) Instruction — optional extra line shown with the prompt (for example: translate into which language). 9) Keywords — optional tags for flashcard mode (comma- or semicolon-separated); may be left empty.

If a line has fewer than nine Tab-separated values, missing trailing fields count as empty. Lines where both description and explanation are empty are skipped.

You can leave all four multiple-choice fields empty if you only use straight answer or flashcards, but you must still use Tabs so that picture, instruction, and keywords stay in the correct columns when you need them.

Prefer UTF-8 when saving the file. After import, review items in the deck editor—especially punctuation, pictures, and special letters.

On the same page as Import .txt, the section Generate deck from text (AI) builds a new deck (or two decks) from plain text you paste or upload. You must be logged in. The server sends your text to an AI model (OpenAI). If AI is not configured on the host (`OPENAI_API_KEY`), generation will not run—ask whoever runs the site.

What to expect. You choose flashcards only, multiple choice only, or both, plus target counts per mode (within the allowed range shown on the form), how many wrong options each MC question has, and optionally the language of the generated cards and a deck title. If you pick both, PSTUDY saves two decks—one for flashcards and one for multiple choice—so each can be practiced in the right mode.

Generation aims at roughly your target number of items, not a full index of a very long book or manual. Only the first portion of the text is sent (currently up to about 40,000 characters); the import page shows how much of your text counts toward that limit. For long sources, split the text into sections and run Generate several times (one deck per section often works well).

Privacy. Your source text is processed on the server and by the AI provider—do not use for confidential material unless your policy allows it.

When the model returns more rows than your targets. If the total number of items is at most 20% above your configured target (flashcard target, MC target, or both added together when you asked for both), PSTUDY keeps every row and saves that full set.

If the model returns more than 20% extra, PSTUDY reduces the list to your targets by sampling evenly across the model’s order (so you are not limited to only the first chunk of items). The saved deck uses that reduced set. In that situation your browser may also download two PSTUDY .txt files: one with the full model output (`-ai-full`) and one with the same subset PSTUDY saved (`-ai-pstudy-capped`). You can re-import either file from Import .txt if you want the full set in PSTUDY or want to trim cards yourself. Some browsers limit multiple downloads; if one file is missing, check the download bar or site permissions.

Always review generated items in the deck editor before exams or sharing—AI output can contain mistakes or awkward wording.

Under Exams, create a timed exam from one of your decks. You choose duration, exam type (multiple choice or straight answer), how questions are phrased, and invite people by email. Each invite gets a private link.

My assigned exams lists invites that match your logged-in email. Open an exam from there or from the link in your mail. Submitting ends the attempt; you can review as allowed by the exam settings.

Organisers manage invites and results on the exam detail page; examinees can delete an assignment from their list (the invite is revoked), which is equivalent to declining the invitation.

PstudyCommunity lists decks that authors marked as shared. Search by title, field, or topic, and narrow by Deck language—select one or more languages you read so decks in German or French (for example) stay out of the list.

Authors set the deck’s language in the deck editor; decks with no language still appear if you leave all language boxes unchecked, or if you turn on “Include decks with no language set” while filtering.

Copy to my decks duplicates a deck into your account so you can edit and practice it privately.

Each listing shows Draft or Checked. These match the PstudyCommunity quality workflow: Draft until a review is completed; Checked after an invited reviewer has finished (see PstudyCommunity quality and peer review below).

On My decks, any deck you own that is Shared also shows the same Draft / Checked badge beside the item count.

Shared decks can carry a quality label for PstudyCommunity: Draft or Checked. This is independent of whether you keep a private copy after using Copy to my decks—it describes the original shared listing the author maintains.

Where it appears. PstudyCommunity cards show Draft or Checked. My decks shows the same badge for decks you marked Shared. In the deck editor, turn on Share with PstudyCommunity to publish; the header then shows Draft or Checked when relevant.

Draft means the deck is offered on PstudyCommunity but no invited peer has finished a structured corrections pass yet. Checked means an invited reviewer opened their link, edited item text and pictures within the allowed rules, saved, and marked the review complete; the author is notified by email and listings update.

Inviting a reviewer. In the deck editor, if the deck is shared and still Draft, use Peer review (toolbar). Enter the reviewer’s email and send—like exam invitations, they should log in with that email. Once a deck is Checked, this invite option is no longer shown from the editor.

Reviewer role. From the invite link, reviewers may fix typos and answer content and update images, but they cannot add or remove items (rows). They save changes, then complete the review so the deck becomes Checked for everyone.

MyCommunities is for decks shared inside your organization (for example a school, company, or team). It is separate from PstudyCommunity, which lists decks shared with everyone using PSTUDY.

Where to find it. Use MyCommunities in the header to open your organization’s library of shared decks. If you are an admin, you also have Manage MyCommunities to add people and send invitations.

Membership. You only see MyCommunities content when your account belongs to an organization. An admin can add someone who already has a PSTUDY account (by email) or send an email invitation; the invitee should sign in with the same email address the invitation was sent to, then accept the link. If email is configured on the server, invitations may arrive by mail; otherwise the organiser may share the link another way.

Sharing a deck. In the deck editor, open MyCommunities sharing (shown when you belong to at least one organization). Pick the organization, choose who can see the deck (all members or teachers only), and save. This is independent of Share with PstudyCommunity—you can use one, the other, or both.

Verification. For all members visibility, students usually see a deck only after a teacher or admin verifies it (from the library or while viewing the deck). Teachers only keeps the listing off student views by design.

Copying. Like on PstudyCommunity, members can copy a shared deck into My decks; that copy is private unless you share it again.

Speech recognition works best in Chrome or Edge. Practice Speak and Listen may be limited on other browsers. If your host enables Google Cloud speech, deck authors can use options that favour recognition of answers in the deck.

Flashcards can use browser-only or Google speech to dictate your answer—see the flashcard speech control in practice when flashcard mode is on.

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Home page: link from the logo or Home above. Account issues: use Log in and password reset on the sign-in page.

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