MTG Proxy Decklist Formatting for Archidekt: The “Nothing Imported” Survival Guide

Table of Contents

Archidekt is awesome for brewing, sorting, goldfishing, and obsessively rearranging your categories at 2am. But exporting from Archidekt can be a little… too helpful.

The two most common outcomes when someone tries to order proxies from an Archidekt list:

  1. “It imported… but it pulled a bunch of stuff I didn’t mean to include.”
  2. “It imported nothing and I feel like I’m being personally targeted.”

Let’s fix both—without turning this into a spreadsheet hobby.

The goal format (same as always): boring and line-based

Your exporter might give you categories, labels, set codes, and extra metadata. Your importer usually wants this:

1 Sol Ring
1 The One Ring
2 Nature's Lore
10 Forest

Quantity + card name. One per line. That’s your end state.

The best Archidekt export settings (the safe default)

In Archidekt, export lives under Extras → Export Deck on the deck page.

When you open export, focus on three settings:

1) Export Type: choose Text

If there’s an export type selector, pick Text. You want a copy/pasteable list, not a fancy structured file unless you specifically need it.

2) Export format/template: choose the “just cards” option

Archidekt often offers multiple text templates. You want the one that outputs something like:

  • 1 Example Card

Not the one that outputs:

  • 1x Card Name (SET) *F* [Category] ^Label,#000000^

If your export preview looks like it’s carrying a backpack full of extra symbols, pick a simpler template.

A quick trick: if you see a bunch of checkboxes for export “options,” use Uncheck All and then select only the minimal “card list” format.

3) Uncheck “Include out of deck cards”

This one setting is responsible for a ridiculous number of “why did my order include 40 extra cards?”

If your deck has a maybeboard, “considering” cards, or categories you marked as not-in-deck, that checkbox will happily dump them into your export.

For ordering proxies, you almost always want: only what’s in the deck.

If nothing imported: the fastest triage

When an importer says “no cards found,” it’s usually one of these:

Problem A: Your export is full of headers and grouping text

Example of what breaks importers:

Creatures (24)
1 Esper Sentinel
1 Drannith MagistrateArtifacts (12)
1 Sol Ring

Fix: delete every line that isn’t a card entry.

Your list should start looking like:

1 Esper Sentinel
1 Drannith Magistrate
1 Sol Ring

Problem B: Your export has extra fields (set codes, foil flags, labels)

Some importers can handle set codes. Some can’t. If yours can’t, it may fail the whole import instead of failing a few lines.

Fix: strip the noise until each line is just quantity + name.

If you see something like:

1x Sol Ring (CMM) *F*

Convert it to:

1 Sol Ring

Problem C: “Smart” punctuation got introduced

Copy/pasting through certain apps can turn normal punctuation into “smart” punctuation.

Common offenders:

  • Curly apostrophes (’ instead of ‘)
  • Em dashes (— instead of -)
  • Hidden non-breaking spaces

Fix: paste into a plain text editor (Notepad is great for this), then copy from there.

Problem D: Tabs, bullets, or multiple columns

If your export looks like a table, you’re going to have a bad time.

Fix: collapse everything into one line per card.

Stripping categories/headings safely (without deleting real cards)

If you exported a categorized list, here’s a safe way to clean it:

  1. Delete category header lines that contain only words and counts
    Examples: Creatures (23), Instants (12), Ramp, Interaction
  2. Delete blank lines if your importer is picky
    (Some importers don’t care. Some do.)
  3. Keep only lines that begin with a number (or “1x”)
    Real card lines almost always start with a quantity.

If your export uses 1x instead of 1, most importers handle it. If yours doesn’t, change 1x to 1 (a number + space).

Multiple printings: when set codes help, and when they hurt

Archidekt is great at tracking printings, foils, variants, and special versions. That’s useful… right up until the moment you want a list to import cleanly.

When to remove set codes

If your importer is “guessing wrong” or failing to match cards, the fastest fix is to remove set codes and let the version selection happen later during proofing.

Example:

Bad (for strict importers):

1 The One Ring (LTR)
1 Sol Ring (SLD)

Good:

1 The One Ring
1 Sol Ring

When to keep set codes

If you’re ordering a deck where version matching is the whole point (special frames, Universes Beyond variants, Secret Lair chaos), set codes can help—if your tool supports them.

But if you keep them, be consistent. Pick one style and stick with it:

  • 1 Card Name (SET)
  • or 1 Card Name [SET]

If you mix styles, importers get weird.

The “importer is guessing” checklist (fix the usual suspects)

Sometimes your list imports, but a handful of cards come in wrong or not at all. Here’s where that usually comes from.

1) Split cards

These often need the exact Fire // Ice style.

If you see:

  • Fire/Ice
    Change it to:
  • Fire // Ice

(Spaces matter more than they should.)

2) Double-faced cards (DFC/MDFC)

If Archidekt exports the full double name and your importer doesn’t like it, switch to the front-face name only.

Example:

  • Valakut Awakening // Valakut Stoneforge → try Valakut Awakening

3) Apostrophes and punctuation

Cards like Gaea’s Cradle can fail if the apostrophe is “smart.”

If a specific card won’t match:

  • retype the line manually in plain text
  • keep it simple: 1 Gaea's Cradle

4) Universes Beyond / special naming collisions

UB cards and re-skins can be a version-matching minefield. If you’re seeing the “wrong” version show up, don’t fight it inside the decklist line unless your importer truly supports version strings.

Best practice for ordering:

  • Keep the name clean
  • Handle version matching during proofing (where you can actually see what you’re getting)

5) “Special Guests” / bonus sheet weirdness

Some tools treat bonus-sheet or “special guest” set codes differently. If you included set codes and something won’t import, test a clean line with just the name.

A clean Archidekt export workflow (that doesn’t waste your afternoon)

Here’s the practical routine I recommend if you order proxies regularly:

  1. Export using Text + minimal template
  2. Uncheck “Include out of deck cards”
  3. Paste into plain text
  4. Do a quick “numbers-only scan”:
    • every card line starts with a quantity
    • no headers
    • no commentary
  5. Upload

That’s it. If you do those five things, you’ll avoid the “nothing imported” trap almost every time.

Final count sanity (aka: stop printing surprise piles)

Before you upload:

  • Commander: does it equal 99 + commander(s)?
  • 60-card: does main equal 60?
  • Sideboard: do you actually want it printed?
  • Tokens: are they included intentionally?

If your count is off, it’s almost always because:

  • maybeboard got included
  • sideboard got included
  • companion got treated as mainboard
  • tokens got invited without permission

Where to send readers next

Once the decklist imports cleanly, the next bottleneck is usually print quality and version matching. That’s why your two best internal follow-ups here are:

  • the file settings guide (for people uploading their own print-ready files)
  • the Universes Beyond version matching guide (for people who care which printing/art they’re getting)
Scroll to Top