Why Can I not attach a Link Card (with a Google Drive Doc)?

Question

I am checking out the new Link Card functionality.

I immediately thought to create a link card of a Google Drive spreadsheet that I use across a number of other cards.

Creating the link card worked fine. (I did notice that if the Google drive document name had been changed, Trello provides the old version of the name.)

But I can't attach this new link card to any other card. When I click the Attachment button and choose Trello, the Add Card or Board box suggests other cards and offers to search for others, as usual. But the search function will not find the new link card.

I see no way to attach a link card to another card. Am I missing something? Is this the way it's supposed to work? Is this a bug or a feature?

Iain Dooley · Answer

@Jeff Bean yes, it is the same. The link card is really just a presentation layer that makes the front of a card look different if it's a link to a Google Doc. It's the same with a "board link". If you create a card with a link to a board, you see a representation of that board on the front of a card. However if you add the same link to another card, you see a slightly different representation of the board on the back of the card (the same feature, as far as I understand, is being rolled out for cards).

If you attach a Google Doc link to a card as an attachment (rather than creating a link card) you also see that Google Doc represented differently on the back of the card.

So yes, there is a reason to create link cards and yes, linking a link card to another card is no different from linking to the document directly from that card.

Jeff Bean · Answer

That logic suggests that there was no reason to have even created Link Card functionality, because one can attach links to cards already.

I had wanted to connect a link card (containing a Google doc) with a network of other cards that used it. Apparently I can't.

Yes, of course, I can attach the Google doc to all the cards instead. But that's not the same.

Iain Dooley · Answer

@Jeff Bean since the only data in a link card is the link, if you were to attach a link card to another card it would be no different from attaching the link to the card.

So you can just attach the google drive doc link to the card.

If you want to copy the link from the link card in order to attach it somewhere else, you can hover your mouse over the link card and Ctrl/Cmd+c to copy then hover over another command and Ctrl/Cmd+v to paste it, but it will just show up as a good drive link on the target card.