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How do I back up and restore my Trello Boards?

Sierk Oudemans_b7z6za

Hi,

I ran into an issue a month or 2 back where the descriptions on all of my cards in one of my boards were corrupted and I lost a significant amount of data and time to restore everything. Since then I have been wondering about the ability to create a backup file of my Trello boards, preferably one board at a time and save those on my PC. This is something I could do weekly in case another unforeseen major disaster strikes one of my boards. It was suggested that I export my boards to JSON which I was able to do. As a result I got a huge web page with JSON gibberish. So far so good.

The problem is that none of the instructions say anything about what to do with this data. Nor how to import this back into Trello if you wanted to restore a Board to a earlier condition using the saved JSON file. Does anyone out there know how to do this?

Thanks

Accepted answers

Dasha Shakov

Hey everyone!

For those who are interested in a solution for backing up and restoring information in Trello, check out Backups for Trello in the Power-Up marketplace.

With this Power-Up, you'll be able to go back in time and restore your boards to the way they were before something went wrong. We're excited to provide this relief to those who store mission-critical data in their account.

If you have any questions, please don't be shy to comment here or send me a message at dasha@rewind.io.

All comments

Matthew N

Hi Sierk

When exporting to JSON, you need also to convert that JSON to a CSV file. There's instruction at the bottom of this page. Essentially, this export will be a reference guide for you, but there's not a way to import that back into Trello to recreate data.

What I practice, and suggest, is simply to make copies of your boards periodically (once a week, every other week, etc.). This way, if for some reason your board becomes corrupt, you can simply use the copied board. To keep track of them, I just add "backup" to the end of the board title ie: Main Board becomes Main Board Backup.

I hope this helps!

Sierk Oudemans_b7z6za

Thanks Matthew for your response. It is a suitable answer to the problem though it has a couple of weaknesses:

First, your search results are now multiplied by two. Since I rely heavily on the search tool the annoyance of having every card show up twice will take some getting used to.
Your boards are still vulnerable to loss of data. The incident that prompted me to look into this was a corruption of an entire board. I do not know for sure but I can imagine that the problem I reported could easily have affected both the primary board and it's copy.
The board I copied has somewhere between 130 and 150 cards and it took about 30 - 40 minutes to copy the board. This was at work where I have access to high-speed internet.

I am not quite ready to close this discussion. If there is anyone else with any suggestions I would love to hear them.

Jordan McNamee

Sorry so if there is some sort of corrupted element in one of my boards that erases all comments of a card that i have been working on for a year, is there anyway to back up that card so i don't lose all the comments? My team put significant amount of important comments in cards i plan to be able to look back at in a few years for a post mortem so can't risk losing this data.

Mike Mallett

This GitHub project seems to do the trick for backup to JSON files.

Not sure how to Restore any of that data though. That would be a nice feature.

https://github.com/mattab/trello-backup

Hubert Kriger

Yes please for feature which provides restoring from JSON file. At this point, there are a few options for backup, but not a single one for restornig (at least known to me). It looks like for now, backuping is quite pointless.

danielcccsi

I know that this is not a good enough solution, but I have tried saving the Trello board with the web browser "save as" functionality, and the hard copy that results, at least shows the cards and its text. I wonder if this is helpful.

Didier Thizy

My company Rewind.io has had some requests from our customers to extend our automated backup and rollback capabilities to Trello (and Atlassian in general). We would really like to understand the use cases that users in the ecosystem have. I've seen Trello used in lots of different contexts so understanding the use cases for backup, versioning and rollback scenarios, and any recommendations on how to prioritize to best serve the community would be really helpful! Message me anytime at didier@rewind.io if interested to have a discussion.

For reference - Rewind is a leader in backup/rollback for cloud apps like Shopify, Quickbooks and MailChimp. Over 20,000 customers have trusted Rewind to backup their critical data including Shopify's largest customers and brands like Hasbro and P&G.

unknown

Hi, have you guys found a solution on this backup and restore or not?
I checked rewind.io and they have not launched this product yet.

Alvaro_Sassano

Hi, Agus!! Do you kwon when rewind.io are going to launch?? Or other solution??

Thanks guys

unknown

Hi Alvaro, nope, I've been waiting for rewind.io to launch it all this time. No other solution except manually copying each list in the board. Let's hope that rewind.io come out soon, and inform me if you know anything, too.

Thanks guys

Alvaro_Sassano

Hi Agus, let's hope they get it out soon. A query, how do I copy the comments when copying the board? Because I did the test of copying a board and it does not copy the comments of the cards, which generally have a lot of information.

Jeremy Wong_b6f80i

Hello @Sierk Oudemans @Alvaro_Sassano @[deleted]

I've developed a solution that both backs up and restores Trello boards. Am I able to discuss this with you over email initially to get your feedback/thoughts?

Cheers,

Jeremy

José Gollentz

@Jeremy Wong : I think the whole community would be interested to know about your solution, I would also like to try your solution.

BR José

Karl Beardsley

Same here, would also be interested in your solution

Dasha Shakov

If you have any questions, please don't be shy to comment here or send me a message at dasha@rewind.io.

Adam L. Turco

Thanks for this!

Dasha Shakov

Happy to help and always here to answer any questions! @Adam L. Turco ✨

Creag

@Jeremy Wong I would also like to see your solution please

Aviva_6jso8h

Is Backups for Trello through Restore the only way (i.e. to pay for that?) Is there a way to freely download a backup that can be uploaded/restored if something happens?

trello admin_k7puqi

Hi,

I have huge problems with Rewind.io, and I'm currently without backup, despite having been a customer for nearly a year, because of an issue linking to the account. If you are still working there, please have a word with your support staff.

YFdyh000

I am thankful that it is very simple to configure and quick for backing up many boards.

BackupLABS

Hi everyone,

BackupLABS now has a Trello Backup & Restore solution available. We backup your data automatically each day and your data is encrypted during transfer and at rest on our servers.

Marketplace link here: https://trello.com/power-ups/632331322a025d03113ed62a/backuplabs-trello-backup.

Setup takes less than 5 minutes.

We can backup (and restore!) all your boards, lists, cards, attachments, custom fields, checklists and covers. You also have the ability to save your Trello data as a zip file back to your computer.

We welcome any feedback (good and bad) to ensure that we can make this product better for our users and this community.

Valeriia Sitolenko

Hi everyone!

FluentPro, the company I represent, offers a solution for automated Trello backup and restore. FluentPro Backup is a cloud-based platform that provides the following features:

set up continuous automated backup,
develop a schedule for backup or conduct it on demand,
perform a complete or partial backup,
restore damaged or lost data from point-in-time backup copy.

FluentPro Backup helps companies minimize the risks of data loss due to human errors and eliminate its damaging consequences. It also allows users to reduce downtime caused by corrupted critical data with restoration in a few clicks.

Will

Hello, coming to this late, but the original question never really got answered: what do you actually do with the JSON?

There's no native import: Trello exports a board but won't read one back in, which is why the file feels useless. It isn't, though; it's a reference document rather than a restore file. For the failure Sierk actually hit, corrupted descriptions across a board, the JSON is enough on its own: search it for a card name and the previous desc value is sitting right there to paste back. Tedious across 150 cards, but it's data that would otherwise be gone.

Two caveats. Attachments are stored as URLs rather than files, so uploads aren't preserved by an export. And if you want a programmatic restore, that's the REST API rather than the UI: you can POST cards, checklists and comments onto a fresh board, which is what the scripts linked earlier in this thread do underneath.

On board copies as a backup: copying a board doesn't carry comments across. If your team keeps real content in comments, a copy quietly isn't backing that up - which is worth knowing before relying on it.

If you'd rather not maintain any of this, several apps cover Trello: Rewind, BackupLABS and FluentPro are all in this thread, and ProBackup is another (full disclosure: I am co-founder of ProBackup). They mostly exist to solve the restore half that the JSON export doesn't.

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