Notes to flashcards: turn your notes into a deck in a minute
Upload your notes and QuerySpark writes flashcards from what is actually in it, so you can drill the key terms on exactly what your course covers. Pasted text, or .txt and .md files.
- No credit card
- Free plan after the trial
- Cancel anytime
Drop a PDF, slides or notes
or paste a YouTube link
Quick answer
How do you turn your notes into flashcards?
Paste your notes (or upload a .txt or .md file) and choose flashcards. QuerySpark picks out the terms, definitions and ideas in them and writes a deck you review with spaced repetition, so cards you find hard come back sooner. It takes about a minute. Export the deck as CSV for Anki or Quizlet if you prefer. A free account starts with a 3-day Pro trial and no card; after it, the free plan includes 20 flashcards a month.
- Paste any length, or upload .txt and .md files
- Cards only use what your notes say
- Spaced repetition with no deck settings
- CSV export for Anki and Quizlet
How it works
How to turn your notes into flashcards
- 01
Pick one lecture or topic
A deck per lecture is small enough to review daily. Copy just those notes from your notes app.
- 02
Paste or upload them
Paste the text, or upload .txt and .md files from apps like Obsidian. For handwritten pages, use the photo of notes converter instead.
- 03
Choose the card style
Definition cards for vocabulary, question cards for how and why, fill-in-the-blank for formulas and dates, or a mix.
- 04
Delete what you already know
Remove cards you could answer in your sleep. Fewer, harder cards make for shorter, more useful reviews.
Example
Flashcards from ECON 101 notes
A sample of what you get from your notes on economics. Yours is written from your own file.
Price elasticity of demand
% change in quantity demanded divided by % change in price
Elastic demand
|PED| greater than 1: quantity responds more than price
Determinants of elasticity
Substitutes, necessity, share of income, time period
What your flashcards include
- Term and definition cards for every key concept
- Concept cards that ask why and how, not only what
- Cards sized to your material: a short reading gets a short deck
- Spaced repetition built in: no deck settings to configure
How you study them
Flip, rate how well you knew it, and move on. Cards you find hard return sooner; cards you know well fade out until just before you would forget them.
Best for: vocabulary and definitions, formulas and dates, daily ten-minute review.
How we read notes
Paste notes straight in, any length from a paragraph to a full unit. Short notes produce a small, focused set; longer notes are split into topics first so coverage stays even.
Get the best results
- Write in full sentences where you can.
- Include the definitions and the examples your teacher used.
- Add your exam date so reviews are paced to it.
How to turn notes into flashcards
By hand, the method is the same one good flashcard makers have always used: one idea per card, the question on the front phrased the way an exam would ask it, and a short answer on the back. Cornell-style notes make this easier, because the cue column on the left is already a list of questions.
The slow part is going through pages of notes to find every card-worthy idea. That is what the AI does: it reads the notes, finds the terms and ideas, and writes a first draft of the deck. Your part is a quick edit, which takes a few minutes instead of an evening.
Turn notes into Anki or Quizlet flashcards
For Anki, export the deck as CSV, then use File, Import, choose the file and map the columns to Front and Back. Anki's scheduler then takes over.
For Quizlet, open the CSV in Google Sheets or Excel, copy the two columns and paste them into Quizlet's Import box with Tab as the separator. Pasting raw CSV usually splits definitions that contain commas.
Notes in Goodnotes, Notion or RemNote
Goodnotes and Notability notes are handwriting, which has to be read before it can become cards. Export the pages as images or PDF and upload them through the photo of notes converter; neat handwriting is read with OCR.
Notion pages can be copied and pasted, or exported as Markdown and uploaded. If you already write in RemNote, its own flashcard syntax turns lines into cards as you type, which may be quicker than any converter for notes you have not written yet.
Can ChatGPT make flashcards from notes?
Yes. Paste the notes and ask for flashcards, and it will list pairs. Ask for a strict "front; back" format if you plan to import them.
You then need somewhere to study them and a schedule for when each card comes back. QuerySpark writes the cards into a deck with spaced repetition already running, and only from what is in your notes, so it will not add facts your course never taught.
How many flashcards should I make per lecture?
Enough to cover every idea you could be examined on, and no more. For most lectures that is somewhere between a dozen and a few dozen cards, but your notes decide it, not a target number.
Watch for two problems: cards that bundle three facts into one answer (split them) and cards that ask the same thing twice (delete one). The free plan's 20 flashcards a month covers about one lecture; the 3-day trial is the time to catch up on a backlog.
Things that trip people up with notes
Very short notes (a few lines) produce only a handful of questions. That is intentional: we do not invent facts that are not in your text.
Abbreviations only you understand can confuse the model. Spell out key terms once.
Questions about notes to flashcards
Paste the notes into QuerySpark, or upload a .txt or .md file, and choose flashcards. The deck is ready in about a minute and studied with spaced repetition.
Yes, to start. The 3-day Pro trial needs no card, and the free plan then includes 20 flashcards a month. Decks you made stay in your account.
Yes. QuerySpark works in the browser on phone and desktop: paste your notes, get a deck, and review it with spaced repetition.
Generate the deck here, export it as CSV, and import it in Anki with File, Import, mapping the columns to Front and Back.
Yes. Photograph the pages or export them from Goodnotes as images or PDF, and upload them. Neat handwriting is read with OCR before the cards are written.
Yes. Copy and paste the page, or export it from Notion as Markdown and upload the .md file.
It writes cards from your notes rather than from general knowledge. Very short notes give a short deck instead of a padded one.
About 80 characters is the minimum, but a page or more of notes gives a proper set. We size the set to your material instead of padding it.
Yes. Copy and paste works from any notes app; formatting is ignored, the text is kept.
Yes. Export any deck as CSV, which both Anki and Quizlet import.
Yes, to start. New accounts get a 3-day Pro trial with no credit card. After the trial the free plan includes 1 study session, 20 questions and 10 PDF pages a month, and you keep everything you made. You can also try the question generator on pasted text without an account, 3 times a day.
Still stuck? Email us.
Make flashcards from your notes
Start with a 3-day Pro trial. No credit card, and you keep everything you make.
