How can i backup my project and boards?
Asked by Tony T:

HI

I'm new to Trello and not very IT savvy. My free account seems a great tool for planning, scheduling and sharing with my small team, the milestones and tasks of my arts/ education project. But even at this early stage i've already added a lot of content/ideas in the cards for two board. I want to back this work up in case of info getting corrupted or lost. But i can't see how. I don't need anything more elaborate. And, as i say, i'm afraid i'm not very tech and/or jargon savvy.

I have tried searching for solutions on line. But i'm either reading how others are at the same stumbling block, or suggestions for trying technical operations that - to my little knowledge - don't do what i want.

As i see it. The closes solution would be to copy an entire board. and call it backup...?

Many thanks

Tony - 23/08/20


Answers:
author: Dasha Shakov
body: Hey [@Tony T](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4060192)  

I think the [**Backups for Trello**](https://trello.com/power-ups/5f68db5b510db84238769710) Power-Up might be exactly what you're looking for. A lot of the DIY backup solutions are either too complicated, time-consuming or simply are not true backups (like board copies). As a Trello user with critical information saved in your boards, you want to be able to recover that data quickly, if a data disaster occurred.

[**Backups for Trello**](https://trello.com/power-ups/5f68db5b510db84238769710) automatically backs up your boards daily. You can use the user-friendly Rewind Vault to restore boards back to the way they were when everything worked perfectly.

Rewind backs up boards, lists, cards, attachments, and more.

If you have any questions, feel free to email me directly at dasha@rewind.io.


author: Iain Dooley
body: [@Tony T](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4060192) yep, you can copy a board and call it Backup. On the free plan you can also export a board to "JSON" format and save it, you can't reconstitute a board from this, but it means you have all your data in a pinch without any sort of technical setup requirements, you could save these exports in Google Drive or Dropbox or something.

comments: author: Tony T
body: Hi Iain. Many thanks for coming back to me. Your clarifications seem to point up the same drawback i wondered at re. the facility to export a board to "JSON" format: I don't understand the use of this if a board can't be reconstituted from this? So other than creating backup boards - which can't be exported and saved any other way (than the above-mentioned "JSON" formats) - there's no fall back in a worst case scenario?


author: Iain Dooley
body: [@Tony T](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4060192) well, a worst case scenario implies that Trello doesn't exist, in which case you couldn't reconstitute a Trello board from your JSON anyway. You can view JSON in a somewhat readable format by putting it into a formatter, there are some online:

<https://jsonformatter.curiousconcept.com/>

If you have business class you can export a board as CSV (but you'll have to pay for it), if you use the Board Export power up then you have more options, but depending on how you use power ups then this might also incur costs.

You can do a 2 way synch to Google Sheets, but that's a pretty technical setup:

<http://www.littlebluemonkey.com/blog/automatic-trello-backups-using-a-google-spreadsheet>

But that's pretty technical to set up and you said you're not technical, and you can also use a 3rd party backup service such as:

<https://rewind.io/backup/trello/>

But then that will also cost money (although may be cheaper than paying for Trello business class).

But if you want a backup method that costs nothing and doesn't require any technical setup, then copying the board and calling it "backup" then downloading the content as JSON and saving it somewhere else is your best bet.