Most important operations on the element displayed in the element window are available from the element pop-up menu. To open this menu press Alt+F10 or right-click over an empty element area (i.e. area not covered by components; clicking over a component will open its own pop-up menu). If your element is entirely filled out with components, you can also right click over the navigation toolbar

The element pop-up menu includes the following options:

• Learning - set the element's place in the learning process
  • Learn branch (Ctrl+Alt+L) - make repetitions only in the selected branch. SuperMemo will propose the nearest ancestor as the root of the learned branch. Responding with Yes to Do you want to learn this branch will begin repetitions. Responding with No will make SuperMemo propose the next nearest ancestor as the root of the learned branch. Select Cancel to abort this option. If you want to manually point to the root of the branch to learn, select it in the contents window and click Learn at the bottom of that window
  • Forget (Ctrl+R) - remove the displayed element from the learning process and put it at the end of the pending queue
  • Remember (Ctrl+M) - introduce the displayed element into repetitions. Optionally you can specify the first interval, e.g. if you are sure you will remember the item in 2 months, you might save time by choosing the interval 60 without a detriment to the learning process. Once you memorize an element, you it will recur periodically for a repetition. Remember executed on a task will convert it into a memorized item and introduce it into the learning process
  • Dismiss (Ctrl+D) - ignore the displayed element at repetitions. It will still be available when browsing the collection but it will not enter the learning process unless you explicitly choose Remember (see above)
  • Jump interval - decide when to make the next repetition of the element. You should use this option with caution as all attempts to override the selection made by SuperMemo may negatively affect the accuracy of the repetition spacing algorithm. You will most likely use this option if you make a repetition of an important item and you are anxious that the long interval requested by SuperMemo might make your forget this item. Similarly, in period of intense repetitions, e.g. after vacation, you might manually increase intervals of some less important items to make sure that the repetition takes place after the busy period determined with Mercy
  • Add to drill (Ctrl+Shift+D) - add the displayed element to the final drill queue
  • Reset repetition history - reset the history of repetitions for the currently displayed element. You can opt for using this option once you substantially change the contents of the element so that you feel like learning a completely new piece of knowledge
• Edit
  • Element parameters - open a dialog box with element parameters. This option, also available with Ctrl+Shift+P, is most useful for the following purposes: changing the forgetting index (e.g. to increase the quality of remembering), changing the ordinal number (most often used in sorting the pending queue), changing the category to which the element belongs, changing the priority of a task or changing the tasklist to which the task belongs. In the case of changing the category, if you decide that your item would rather belong to Physics than to Chemistry, you can select Chemistry in Edit : Edit parameters : Category and the item will be moved to the appropriate branch of the knowledge tree. You can also use Edit parameters to add comments to an element or to view the element's repetition history
  • Duplicate - create a copy of the currently displayed element in the same place of the knowledge tree
  • Edit title - open the title window with an editing field that makes it possible to edit the element's title. Use this option or Alt+T to quickly generate a title from text fields in the element. If you want to edit the existing title, you may prefer to click the title in the contents window and edit it there. This will prevent generating a new title
  • Swap components - swap texts and fonts between the first non-answer text component and the first answer text component. Usually you need this option to swap questions with answers when you learn bilingual pairs of vocabulary. It is most useful in conjunction with Duplicate (see above). The shortcut for swapping components is Ctrl+Shift+S
  • Copy element - copy the element to the clipboard. Please note that large files and large texts are not copied to the clipboard. These are kept in the clipboard as the reference to the copy of those files or texts on the disk. In other words, if you paste the contents of the clipboard containing an element to the body of an e-mail and send it to your colleague, he will not be able to paste images, sound files, long texts, etc.
  • Paste template - paste the contents of the element stored in the clipboard with Copy element (above) to the current element. This option is similar to Template : Apply template (below) with this difference that the template is taken from the clipboard instead of the template registry. Paste template can work between collections but in order to be complete it must be made on the same computer. This is because of the fact that Copy element stores element in the clipboard with some reference to files on the user hard disk
  • Paste element - paste the contents of the element stored in the clipboard to a newly added element in the current category
• Template - template operations
  • Save as template - save the currently displayed element as a template in the template registry. This makes it possible to use the looks of the element in other elements
  • Save as default - save the current element as a template and make it the default template in the currently selected category. Choosing Alt+Ctrl+s is the fastest way to make sure that all new items added to the current category assume a given look
  • Apply template - delete all components and load a template from the template registry (after selecting the template in the registry, you should click the button Accept at the bottom of the template registry window)
  • Merge with template - merge the currently displayed element with a template from the template registry. Merging is to help you combine element's contents with the template's look. The process of merging begins with loading the selected template. Then SuperMemo transfer all matching registry objects (e.g. texts, images, etc.) from the old template to the new template. SuperMemo will warn you if it deletes a component because of being unable to match it with the new template. For example, if your element contains an image and you merge it with a template that does not have an image, the image will be deleted. Important! There is no undo for merging templates!
  • Add to template - adding templates is similar to merging templates but the contents of the new template is simply superimposed over the old template. This way, you can create a template with an image and add this image to selected elements by adding the image template. In merging templates, the number of components equals the number of components in the merged template, while in adding templates the number of components is a sum of components in the element and in the template
  • Save to file - save the current element as a template file. This file can later be loaded into another collection with Load from file (see below). You can view template files with any text editor. Note that these files do not store registry objects but only references to appropriate files. This way a template file is useful only as long as the source collection remains in its original location on the disk. Once it is moved, references in the template file will be useless
  • Load from file - load a template file saved with Save to file (see above). Loading template file deletes all components and creates new components specified in the template
• Selection - perform operations on a group of selected component. You select components by putting them in the editing mode or in the dragging mode
  • Link registry member - link a given registry member to all selected component. The components must be of the same type. For example, if the components are images, you will link to them an image file from the image registry. If they are texts, you will link a text registry member, etc.
  • Link registry font - link a selected font from the font registry to all selected components. The components must be of text or sound type
  • Alignment and size - align a group of components or change their size. This makes it easy to align left borders of components, spread them equally, make them of the same size, etc.
• Background - determine the background image used in the currently selected element. If you want to change the background in all elements, use Tools : Options : SuperMemo : Default background image
  • Import file - import an image file to use as the background in the currently displayed element. This file will first be integrated with the image registry. The file must be in BMP format
  • Link from registry - link the element with an image from the image registry. The linked image will be displayed as the background
  • Arrangement - determine the way the background image will be displayed
    • Top-left - display the background image in the top-left corner of the element display area
    • Center - display the background image in the center of the element display area
    • Tile - tile background image throughout the element display area, i.e. fill the element with many copies of tightly aligned bitmap
    • Stretch - stretch the background image to fill exactly the contents of the element display area. If the background image is smaller than the element it will be extended
  • Delete - remove the background image
• Color - determine the background color of the element
• AutoPlay - make sure the element plays its first playable component each time the element is displayed. Playable components are: sound, video, script and programmed component
• Type - determine the type of the element: item, topic or task
  • Item - this is the basic element type used in the learning process. Very often items are just questions and answer. See: Topics vs. items
  • Topic - mark the current element as topic (as opposed to an item). This is mostly important to determine the way the element will be treated in the learning process. Topics are presented once and dismissed. They are treated only as a synthetic introduction to the learned material. Items enter the learning process and are repeated indefinitely. They are considered to be the knowledge that has to be retained in memory
  • Task - tasks are used in to-do lists and reading lists. If you select this option, the current element will be added to the current tasklist as a new task. If you uncheck Task, the currently displayed task will be removed from its tasklist, dismissed and stored in the tasklist archive
• Components
  • Test repetition cycle - test the repetition cycle without making a repetition. This makes it possible to see if all components show up in proper stages of the cycle: show answer, grade, next repetition, etc.
  • Repeat AutoPlay - play again the first playable component (the one played with AutoPlay). This can be useful in pronunciation exercises when you want to hear again the learned word or sound
  • Next component - select the next component and set it in the editing mode
  • Previous component - select the previous component and set it in the editing mode (the currently selected component is set in the presentation mode)
  • Translate all - translate all text and sound components to the currently selected language (in Tools : Options : Language : Collection translation). If no language is selected or no translation is available, this option has no effect
  • Transliterate all - display the phonetic transcription of all text components in the currently selected language (in Tools : Options : Language : Phonetic transcription). If no phonetic registry is selected then this option has no effect. If the transcription of a given word is not found, a string of question marks will be displayed instead. This option can also be used for a quick spell-checking of your texts. Misspelled words will show as question marks. Naturally your phonetic transcription registry setting must match the language in which you are writing your collection. If your language is English, there is a 70,000-item phonetic transcription registry available from SuperMemo Library included in the collection: English Pronunciation
  • Component order - change the order of components. Order of components is important in tiling components one over the other. It is also important for AutoPlay (see above). AutoPlay plays the first playable component in component order. Similarly, SuperMemo automatically generates the element's title by using the text of the first text component in the component order
• Delete components - delete all components in the currently displayed element
• Delete element - delete the currently displayed element (same as Ctrl+Shift+Del). Note that all children of the current element in the knowledge tree will also be deleted
• Mode
  • Editing - set all components in the editing mode
  • Dragging - set all components in the dragging mode
  • Presentation - set all components in the presentation mode
  • Switch window - switch to the contents window (the same shortcut, Ctrl+Shift+W, will take you back from the contents window to the element window)
• Jump to - display another element in the element window
  • Next - display the next element according to the element order specified on the pop-up menu of the button Next
  • Previous - display the previous element according to the element order specified on the pop-up menu of the button Next
  • Next element - display the next element in the knowledge tree
  • Previous element - display the previous element in the knowledge tree
  • First element - display the root node of the entire collection
  • Last element - display the last element in the collection, i.e. the last child of the last child of the last child ... of the root node of the knowledge tree
  • Parent element - display the parent element of the current element
  • Ancestor - open a window with the list of all ancestors of the current element in the knowledge tree. You can then select an ancestor by double-clicking its title in the Ancestors window

Frequently Asked Questions

You can create elements in which answers are pictures
Making a copy of an element is easy