I have a set that my classes use very heavily (which include audio and context sentences, so I put a lot of time into it). I foolishly was using it to demonstrate bulk add to a colleague. After I deleted the new, test level the words are still showing up in the course’s total number of words. The course is supposed to be 472 words, but now the total says 722. This means that my students who had been showing “course complete” only show 66% or so completed. I want to delete those extra 250 words, but on my end they don’t show up anywhere (since I’ve already deleted the level). Can anyone help?
As far as I understand your problem you should enter into the course database and delete phantom words/entries. The database is located inside the editing area (Edit course - then second button to the left - Databases). Just go into it, manually look all the pages and delete unwanted words. Anyway, your troubles lie somewhere there. 
Thanks! Yes, I can see the words there! And, yes, I can delete them there too. This doesn’t affect the total word-count for the course, however. I just deleted a couple dozen of them, but the word count remained fixed at 714 and the students who have completed the course still say 66%. .
That is correct. If you are deleting entries that do not appear at all in any of the levels, then the word total word-count for the course (= all unique entries of all levels combined), will stay the same.
Some explanation on the database:
- When you create course, a database to contain all your words is created too.
- When you add a new word to a level, that word is added to that database. Then (I suppose) Memrise adds entry in the level that points to the record in the database.
- When you remove a word from the level, only that pointer is removed, but the word is still in the database!
- Hence, the entry’s answer can still show up as an alternative.
- You may have one and the same entry appearing in two separate levels. The user only needs to learn the word ones; it is essentially the same entry. There are just two levels that have a pointer to it. Because, a level as just a collection of pointers to records in the database.
So, you could have a course with only two level of each 10 words, while your database could contain a 1000 words. In short: all the words in the levels are in the (course’s) database, but not all words in the database are in the course levels.
So, continue to remove the unnecessary entries and all will be okay. If the entries are valid, not rubbish, you can also leave them in the database - they will not hurt. They will show up as alternative answers in the multiple choice though.
That was helpful. Thank you. Yes, I am deleting entries that do not appear in any level, but the total number for the course includes those extra words in the database! The total number in the levels is only 472, but the total for the course is 714. Before I added those “test” words the total was 472 and my students were showing that they finished 100% of course. Now it shows that they’ve only finished 66%. That’s going to be a bummer for the kids!
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So, if there’s a way for me to add those words to a level, if I delete them from the database the total number will reduce?
Strangely, I added another level to the course. I then added one of the phantom words to that level. The total for the course then dropped down from 714 to 473 (the correct total plus 1). I then deleted all of the phantoms, including the one in the new level. The total number is now correct!!! Thank you!
Good feedback. I have seen this behavior (i.e. numbers being incorrect or inconsistent) with the (Android) app where it takes a while before changes (esp. statistics) are fully synced. Did you see this on the web or the App?
Interesting - I’d never think of this type of impact an incorrect statistic might have… good point.
Well, I was able to resolve the problem, but it got even stranger along the way. Based upon the feedback from here, I decided to add another level (to which I was planning on adding all of those stray words). But. As soon as I added one stray word, the total number for the course went back to where it was supposed to be (473, i.e., the correct total number plus the one stray word that I added). At that point it immediately stopped counting all of the other stray words! I then deleted them, and finally the one stray word from the new level. All is back to normal. Very strange. I’m going to try to describe this for a bug report. It might sound convoluted.
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