Board has no Admin — both members are Workspace Admins but can't change Board roles (Free plan)

Question

I've got a Trello board with no board Admin at all, and I can't find a way to fix it myself. Hoping someone here has hit this before.

Setup:

* Board created back in 2018
* Two members on the board, both currently set to "Member" role (no Admin)
* Both of us are Workspace Admins for the workspace this board lives in
* Workspace is on the Free plan
* In the board's Share dialog, the role dropdown is greyed out for every member, including myself, so neither of us can promote anyone to Admin

I think the original board creator (or whoever set it up as Admin originally) left or deleted their Atlassian account years ago, which is probably why the board's been sitting with no Admin since.

I've read that Workspace Admins can normally join any board and assign new Board Admins, but that seems to be a Standard/Premium feature — on Free, being a Workspace Admin doesn't seem to unlock that Share dialog override. Can anyone confirm whether that's actually a Free-plan limitation, or is there something else I'm missing?

Is there any self-service way to get Board Admin back here, or does this need Atlassian staff to manually step in? If it's the latter, how do people on Free plans actually get that kind of thing escalated, since the usual support email route isn't available to us?

Thanks in advance for any pointers.

Tomislav Tobijas · Answer

Hi @bryan_cass ,

Generally, that should have been handled automatically (the system to appoint a new board admin), but if not, support staff need to step in.

What you can do is start a free trial of Trello Premium, let's say, and then raise an official technical ticket.

I'll ping the forum support team (there were a couple of similar cases), and they can raise a ticket in your name (or appoint another user as board admin). This should take 1-2 business days, but someone should get back to you here. 🛎️

Cheers,

Tobi

Anwesha Pan · Answer

Hi @bryan_cass

Yes, you have diagnosed the situation correctly.

* Is this a Free-Plan Limitation? Yes, this is an official limitation of Trello’s Free plan. On free workspace, admin permissions and board admin permissions are completely decoupled. Being a Workspace Admin allows you to manage members and workspace-level settings, but it does NOT grant administrative rights or the ability to alter roles on individual boards.
* Will Atlassian Support Manually Step In? No. Even if you could reach a human agent, Atlassian Support will not manually assign board admins or alter permissions on a board.

Below are few self-troubleshooting steps you could try:

Option A: The 14-Day free trial trick

Because you are already Workspace Admins, you have the authority to manage the workspace plan:

* Go to your Workspace Settings ➔ Billing (or click the Upgrade prompt).
* Start a 14-day free trial of Trello Standard or Premium (no upfront payment is required, or you can cancel immediately so it won't renew).
* The moment the Workspace is upgraded, your Workspace Admin status will automatically give you Board Admin rights across all boards in that workspace.
* Open the orphaned board ➔ open the Share menu ➔ the role dropdown will now be active. Promote yourself and your colleague to Admin.
* Once your roles are locked in, cancel the trial or downgrade the Workspace back to Free.
* Result: Your Board Admin status remains active even after returning to the Free tier.

Option B: Move the lists to a fresh board

If you do not want to start a trial or enter billing information, you can migrate the content to a board you own:

* Create a new board in the Workspace (you will automatically be the Board Admin).
* Go to the old board. Because you are standard members, you still have edit permissions over cards and lists.
* On each list, click the ••• (List Actions) menu ➔ select Move list.
* Set the destination to your new board.
* Repeat for all lists.

I hope this helps & resolves your issue. 🙂

Thanks,

Anwesha