Is there a way to disable the delete card functionality for users?
Asked by Bill Miller:

I would like to use Trello to manage a process that requires multiple people to have access to the board, but I would like to restrict delete rights to just the Admins. Can this be done?


Answers:
author: Carlos Garcia Navarro
body: Hi Bill,

I don't think you have the granularity with Trello to remove the delete card permission from a normal user. Would it be acceptable to have admins and observers (where observers are members with read-only access to a board)? Have you thought of using JIRA? ;-)

comments: author: Michael
body: Hi Carlos,

What is the official line from Trello developers? it seems there is a real demand for control over who can delete cards. Will this be a feature in the near future?

Michael


author: cassandra
body: Agree here - with multi board guest or just team members allowing them to delete a card is a lot of risk to any workspace.  

There should be a setting to allow only board admins to delete a card.  

<br />

How is Jira going to help? I'd like to know   


author: Shery
body: Agree - deleting cards should be restricted to Admins.

Unfortunately observer status not acceptable since observers cannot upload attachments which all our team members need.

Had a team member accidentally delete a card ! :( forntunately it was a fairly new card so it was easy to reconstruct it. However we have some cards on the board with plenty of attachments over the years. This will be a headache if deleted accidentally by non-admins.


author: Dasha Shakov
body: Hey [@Shery](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4801806)! Sorry to hear you lost a Trello card. I work at Rewind -- we developed a backup \& recovery Power-Up for Trello called [**Backups for Trello**](https://trello.com/power-ups/5f68db5b510db84238769710) for this very reason.

We hear about people accidentally permanently deleting cards, lists, and sometimes even boards. If you back up your Trello account, you can easily restore the data with Rewind in a few seconds using the Power-Up. You can think of it as an "undo" button for Trello and a way to give new employees access to important Trello boards without stressing about data loss.


author: Matthew Norman
body: [@Dasha Shakov](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4278176) Wonderful, a monthly service I'd have to pay for to back up my Trello boards because you guys refuse to add Delete Permissions ... seriously, why isn't there "Delete permissions" since we already have "Commenting permissions" and "Add/remove permissions".

Please tell me Atlassian plans to add "Delete permissions" to boards. This should be a no-brainer feature.


author: Daniel Tan
body: [@Dasha Shakov](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4278176) but what if there are new comments after the card have been deleted. Rewinding it to earlier date will rewind those new comments too right? I think there is a use case. But delete permission is still required


author: Marcelo Degl Innocenti (Chelo)
body: I would love to have the capability of managing permissions in that way. I really need to restrict delete rights to Admins. I Hope Trello would have this as soon as possible.

comments: author: Serhan Kaldan
body: I also look for to disable option to delete card for some users but as far as I see there is no chance to do that.


author: KRepair
body: Feels like this feature is way too long overdue! Currently looking for an alternative ticket system due to not being able to easily track if someone is deleting cards.


author: Sam
body: I'd be very interested in this feature, as well!


author: Dasha Shakov
body: Hey everyone! I'm seeing a lot of comments on this thread asking for advanced user permissions to prevent accidental deletions.

While Trello considers building out this feature, I want to recommend a Power-Up called [**Backups for Trello**](https://trello.com/power-ups/5f68db5b510db84238769710). It was developed for this very reason -- helping teams work safer in Trello without stressing about data loss.

If you back up your Trello account with Backups for Trello, you can easily restore the data with Rewind in a few seconds using the Power-Up.

You can think of it as an "undo" button for Trello and a way to give new employees access to important Trello boards without stressing about data loss.

I'm not suggesting that user permissions aren't an important request. They are. But wanted to give people a workaround for the time being if data loss is a real concern.

If anyone has any questions -- let me know.


author: Martin Lohse
body: I need this as well. Might have to switch away from Trello if not available.


author: Michael Naes
body: This feature seems so obvious that it must be an oversight.


author: Jimmy Dunne
body: Hi Team, this is a critical requirement for a Trello board solution we are devising to manage an important aspect of our business. We need to be able to restrict permission for the deletion of Cards etc to a limited number of Admin user.

Are there definite plans to enable this type of functionality ?

comments: author: Jimmy Dunne
body: Will someone form Trello support be responding to this request ?? I see many folks requesting the same thing but don't see any responses or movement ?

Thanks,Jimmy


author: Serhan Kaldan
body: I would expected it is already taken into consideration before and added this feature before.


author: Angelos Stasis
body: please create this, it's absolutely essential


author: Dhananjay_Talekar
body: It's really weird to not have this ability still in 2024 !  
And to make things dangerous - not sure why, but for templates, directly the Delete button gets visible.  
For safety, we have automation to unarchive cards. But there's no way to undo Delete.

Recently our template card got deleted by colleague which has all the required fields to raise a POC request (which is a frequent case).  
And being deleted - we could not do anything other than reverse-engineering the template from latest card.

Kindly look into it on priority !


author: Majd Rustom
body: Huge risk for our use case. Considering alternative software at the moment.

comments: author: Farnoz Hon
body: Following.

We have the same issue.

Any suggestions for alternative would be appreciated.


author: Daniel Tan
body: Following. Great product with silly features at times.


author: Daniel Tan
body: [@Juan Francisco Cordova](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/5042285) chipping in too


author: Juan Francisco Cordova
body: Leaving a message to not let this die.. as to 25/10/2023 this feature is still being begged by users


author: Andrew Nicholls
body: I can't beleive this isn't already in, and I'm absolutely stunned it hasn't been added in the years since it was first asked for. Absolutely crazy not to have this basic functionality.


author: Khizar Rashid
body: Need this option.


author: Michelle Vincent
body: Just introduced Trello to my new team, gave them all assignments and created a Label for each of them. Told them when they finished to delete their label from the card so I'd know they were done. First one to complete deleted her Checklist. :-( Not just messing up the card, but the card was a TEMPLATE! I had hoped to leave the template card visible so I could easily copy cards or edit, but thinking now I am going to have to Archive it so others don't go in and mess with it. Crazy that a program meant for collaboration doesn't have a no-delete setting!!!


author: Alexandra Rodriguez
body: Hello my company is exploring Trello as project management tool for a cross-functional team. I would like to echo the need for a solution that restricts the permission of the delete function to an Admin type of user. Are there any updates as to when and if this feature will be added?

Thanks,

Alexandra


author: Andreas Mader
body: We would need this feature too! Missing documentation in case of delete of a card.


Tags: permission