Why are emails to board creating new cards with the same subject?
Asked by Rob Riccio:

I emailed to my board, a new card was created, good so far. I later forward an attachment to my board, with the same subject as before. According to the guide, emails with the same subject should become a comment under the existing card. Instead, the attachment I wanted to add to the existing card made a separate new card instead. Does Trello treat it differently if it has FW: in the subject instead of RE:?

New user here, trying to learn the ropes. Other threads I found seem to have the opposite problem, with emails creating comments when the users want new cards.


Answers:
author: Francesco Politi
body: Hi, I am an happy user of email-to-board feature, and I have same issue :) Is it possible to avoid duplicate boards in case different emails have same subject?

Thankyou!


author: Brittany Joiner
body: I thought it always created a new card for an email. I just tried to do this and kept getting new cards generated - couldn't make it thread.

I know you can email to a specific card -maybe that's the behavior you're looking for?

![image.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/93842i397186EE22082499/image-dimensions/422x189?v=v2 "image.png")

comments: author: Rob Riccio
body: Thanks, but so far, I've had it do both. I can't figure out what the differing variable is, and the guide says it's an expected functionality.

<https://help.trello.com/article/809-creating-cards-by-email>

Email Threads and Duplicated Cards {#toc-hId--1352615365}
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The first time a message is sent to the board email address, it will create a new card. If that same address receives more messages from the same sender address and with the same subject, the messages will be added to the original card as comments. This could happen when the board email address is added to a long email thread, and it is designed this way to prevent duplicated cards.

Rob


author: Iain Dooley
body: [@Rob_Riccio](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/3909332) I found it pretty unpredictable when I tried to use it long term. I'd say it probably does treat a fwd different from a reply.

comments: author: Rob Riccio
body: Iain, I saw your answer to another thread with basically the opposite problem.

<https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Trello-questions/Emails-to-my-board-are-now-appearing-as-comments-not-as-new/qaq-p/1201752>

Have you found any new info since then, or do you just not use email to board? I'd prefer not to give up on the feature since it would be very handy, and my work doesn't use gmail.

Any idea if Trello employees monitor these boards or any way to tag them? They have the following in their guide, but it doesn't define the rules and it's not behaving as generally described: <https://help.trello.com/article/809-creating-cards-by-email>

Email Threads and Duplicated Cards {#toc-hId--1352594473}
---------------------------------------------------------

The first time a message is sent to the board email address, it will create a new card. If that same address receives more messages from the same sender address and with the same subject, the messages will be added to the original card as comments. This could happen when the board email address is added to a long email thread, and it is designed this way to prevent duplicated cards.


author: Iain Dooley
body: [@Rob_Riccio](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/3909332) I can bring it up with the team in the slack channel but I've heard back from them before on this saying the behaviour was expected so I just stopped using email to board altogether.

My first version to replace this was Zapier, but Zapier won't operate on an email older than 48 hours, and so then my second version to replace it is what eventually become BenkoBoard and now BenkoDesk.

Even if you're not using Gmail, you can still set up a gmail account to forward stuff into and use either BenkoBoard or BenkoDesk (which is the same but allows any board member to reply).

Just be aware that if you're setting up forwarding for all email into BenkoBoard and using Outlook still for your calendars it'll be kinda painful, so you'd want to only forward some emails into your BenkoBoard and those would be imported into Trello.

If you then set up an alias in your gmail you would still be able to reply to those cards from within Trello, too.


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