How can I copy a custom field I created using the Custom Fields Power-Up in Trello to another board?
Asked by Steven Kimmelman:

I just started using the Custom Fields Power-Up in Trello. On one of my Team Boards, I created a dropdown list for Priority (High, Medium, Low). I went to another Board in the same Team and enabled the Custom Fields Power-Up. But there doesn't seem to be a way to copy that Priority custom field to this other Board. Am I missing something?

If that's not possible, then that's a pretty serious limitation to this Power-Up. To have to repeat creating all my custom fields on each and every board is a daunting amount of time to spend.

Anyone know of a solution?

Thank you.


Answers:
author: Katrin Anger
body: [@Steven Kimmelman](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/3501730)

I know from my own experience that it is possible to copy custom fields across boards.

How did you do it?

I recommend to use a dummy card where this custom field has some value already, and copy this card to your target board. If the Custom Fields Power-Up is already enabled there, the custom field should show up on the card copy and be now available to all other cards on that board.

comments: author: Devon Henderson
body: I just want to vote for Katrin's answer - this works and I use it all the time :)


author: Steven Kimmelman
body: Yep! The key was that the custom field on the dummy card had to have a value entered.

I had done that process previously but didn't enter/choose a value in the custom field on the dummy card, so when I copied it to another board, even though the Custom Fields Power-Up was enabled, it didn't copy the custom field.

So that was the key - the custom field has to be in use on the dummy card (or at least it does for a dropdown).

Thanks for that, Katrin! Problem solved - off and running! :)


author: Katrin Anger
body: Good to know! :)


author: Steven Kimmelman
body: For those interested in knowing a deeper level of how the Custom Fields Power-Up works, I discovered the following as I was figuring this out.

I had created a dropdown field called Priority with the following "items":

High, Medium, Low, Reference (in this order)

It was in use on most of my cards.

I then decided I wanted to add a 5th item, but place it between the "Low" and "Reference" items:

High, Medium, Low, Idea/Maybe, Reference

I didn't want to manually add this new item to the dropdown on every board, so I (1) added it to a card on one board, (2) moved the new dropdown item into the 4th position, (3) selected that 4th item on my dummy card, and (4) copied that dummy card to all my other boards where this dropdown was in use.

Positive: It worked in that all my boards now have that additional item in my Priority dropdown and it was pretty quick \& easy.

Negative: Even though I placed the new item into position 4 and selected it on the dummy card before copying it, all the boards where this Priority dropdown already existed showed the new item in the last position (position 5). Bummer! So I still had to manually move it into the position I wanted on each board. Sheesh.

Lesson: Figure this stuff out ahead of time as much as possible!! :)

comments: author: Devon Henderson
body: That's a helpful follow-up, [@Steven Kimmelman](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/3501730) --- thanks for sharing. I'm bookmarking your comment in case anyone else runs into this scenario!


Tags: custom-field

power-up