Is it possible to bulk move lists (not cards) with Bulk Actions?
Asked by PK:

I'm not sure if I'm misunderstanding the capabilities of 'Bulk Actions' or not but it doesn't seem like it's possible to bulk move lists.

When selecting a list in 'Bulk Actions', the actions are applied to each card selected under the list instead of the list itself.

For example, I want to bulk move all lists and their associated cards to another board. When using 'Bulk Actions' for this, the add-on moves the cards and not the list which means the cards are now orphaned from the list.

This isn't great because the list name provides context to the cards.

Is bulk moving lists actually possible?


Answers:
author: Hannah Humbert - Simpla Workflows
body: Hi [@Peter Kao](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4208192) ! Butler automation should be able to achieve this for you. You could create a board button, or a schedule command if you want it to happen on a recurring basis. The command would look something like:  

*"move list "A" to the top position of board "X", and move list "B" to the top position of board "X""* and so on...

comments: author: PK
body: Unfortunately this doesn't work for us since Butler requires us to specify the name of the list to be moved for the automation. Our lists all have different names so we're unable to select those lists.

The lists we want to move are all to the right of a specific list called "Past Meetings ---\>".

![2022-03-02_09-46-34.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/186103iC1ABCD7BA7A877D1/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "2022-03-02_09-46-34.png")


author: Hannah Humbert - Simpla Workflows
body: [@Peter Kao](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4208192) yes, you're not able to say in your command "move all lists to the right of list "X", but you can select multiple lists as mentioned above:  

![move lists.PNG](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/186148i39564A129167E634/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "move lists.PNG")  

Is the issue with this method that the lists that need moving are not set in stone? So lists names may change or new lists are getting added, and you just need a general rule to say "move all lists to the left of "Past Meetings ---\>"?


author: PK
body: I appreciate your help on this.

You're right, the list names are all different. Some examples of our list names are:

* \[Sprint 155\] 2020.12.24
* Weekly Prototype Review -- 12/15/2021
* \[Sprint 203\] 2021.12.16
* Post Mortem - 2021.4.12

If we could, however, select lists based on keywords in the list name, we should be able to complete a bulk of the work.

For example, it'd be great if we could move all lists that have the words "Sprint" or "Meeting" in them.

That way a large chunk of the work would be done and we could just manually clean up the rest of the lists.


author: Hannah Humbert - Simpla Workflows
body: Got it, yeah, I couldn't see a way to achieve exactly what you want. You can however create a command to say something along the lines of "move all cards with a complete due date" or "move all cards inactive for more than 30 days" and then use the variable {cardlistname} for the list in which they should be moved into in the other board. This will generate a new matching list for the cards to be moved into. You'll be left with empty lists on your original board, but I guess you could just rename them for upcoming sprints, or archive them.  

Moving forward, you might want to create schedule commands to auto-move lists to other boards. E.g. every 2 weeks, move list "Post - Mortem - {date} to board "Archives".


author: Alex G_
body: Hi Peter,

I am the creator of the Bulk Actions Power-Up and, If I understand you correctly, you do not need it in your scenario. Our Power-Up is perfect, if you want to perform actions in bulk on a per-card level.

If you want to move the whole list, however, the solution is actually very simple:

In Trello, click on the three dots in the given list's header and choose "Move list...".

Does this help?

comments: author: PK
body: That wouldn't help because we want to *++**bulk move**++* the lists.

Are there any plans to add the ability to bulk move lists for the 'Bulk Action' Power-Up? If not, I'd like to make a formal feature request with this scenario as a use-case.

Thanks


author: Alex G_
body: Hi Peter,

There are no plans of adding this functionality in the near future, since it have not gotten enough votes from our users yet.

Please, write to us at support@bulkactionspu.com to submit your request and I will make sure to add your vote to it.


Tags: bulk-edit