How can I select multiple cards in Trello and move them to another board?

[#1]

I frequently see people asking about how to select multiple cards at once in Trello. The typical use case is to move lots of cards from one board to another, or one list to another.

There is no "select multiple" option in Trello (because there is also not really any notion of "selecting" cards) but you can quite easily create a temporary list to grab a bunch of cards and then do something with them.

You can then move the entire list to another board and/or move all cards in that list to another list. Here is a quick video demonstration:

https://www.loom.com/share/eb0d0ac569274954b6d2d2c634cb5076

[Ummar Farooq]

Thanks  @Iain Dooley  for the shortcut. i thought about it . but never use it 

[Dave Liao]

I like this idea, as it doesn't rely on an Power-Up!

For those who frequently need to manipulate multiple cards and don't mind Power-Ups, I typically direct them to the Bulk Actions Power-Up. Its user interface could use a little polishing, but it works.

[Hannes S]

I want to move up multiple cards. Or how can I see the newest cards on top. without moving them manually? > resolved. that was easy ;-) 

[Rob Williamson]

@Hannes S Hannes - how did you resolve it - did you add the power up - I'd much rather not add 'plugins' and have Trello add the obvious features themselves!

[skridler]

@Hannes S Yes, how DID you do it? It seems silly to me that we can select one card and drag it, but can't select multiples and drag them.

[Rick Mann]

This is really pretty lame. It's a core fluency to be able to select multiple items and drag them as a bunch. The workaround is very clunky in comparison.

[Mike Stevens]

Agree with the vibe here. And, @Iain Dooley "create a temporary list" is only half a solution, since you still need to one-at-a-time move the desired cards into that list. 

[Iain Dooley]

@Mike Stevens if you're selecting multiple cards you also have to select them one at a time. Since you can move cards on a keyboard with the full stop keyboard short cut, and move cards on a mobile device easily between 2 lists in "zoom out" mode I don't see how adding in a "multiple select mode" would be an improvement.

[Mike Stevens]

@Iain Dooley Unless I'm missing a trick, what I'm thinking of as a good reason to add such a feature is when you have many cards and many lists. If I want to move a number of cars from the far left of my board, to a list on the far right, I can only do that one at a time – yes? 

If yes, then being able to select multiple cards, perhaps then animated into a stack when I initiate a drag, I could drag them all to their new list in one go. 

I dunno, maybe I'm confused – but if there's a reason for this 'Bulk Actions' powerup to exist, and for it to be voted a top-10 powerup, I can't be too far off the mark? Sure I can just add yet another powerup to my bills, or Atlassian could just buy it like you did Butler. 😉

All that said – and obviously I am no UXpert – but I feel like it'd be great if Trello cards worked a little more like a file manager. One click to select the card, shift/cmd+click to select multiple cards as needed, and a double-click to open a card. 

[skridler]

@Iain Dooley 
Thanks very much! Good thinking! That helps a lot!

When you mention the full stop keyboard shortcut, do you mean the following?

Move card:
When hovering over a card, pressing Control + X (Windows) or Command + X (Mac) will copy card to your clipboard. Pasting by pressing Control + V (Windows) or Command + V (Mac) while hovering over a list will move the card to the list. This will work between different boards.

[Iain Dooley]

@skridler no the full stop is a "period". The symbol above a full stop is ">" and the symbol above the comma is "<", thus full stop and comma are shortcuts to move the card to the right or left respectively.

Just be aware that the focus remains on the moved card until you move your mouse over another card, so if you're working quickly there's a tendency sometimes to accidentally move a card twice instead of moving one card and then the other.

For a full list of keyboard shortcuts, just use the "?" keyboard shortcut on any Trello board!

[Iain Dooley]

@Mike Stevens 

> Unless I'm missing a trick, what I'm thinking of as a good reason to add such a feature is when you have many cards and many lists. If I want to move a number of cars from the far left of my board, to a list on the far right, I can only do that one at a time – yes? 

Well not really you can use the same strategy: create a list next to the one from which you want to move many cards, move many cards into it then choose "Move all cards in this list" to your target list.

This is also useful if you want to "collect" lots of cards from lots of lists and move them some place, create a list, move it around next to a bunch of lists picking whatever cards you want, then move all cards from that temporary list into the eventual target.

> If yes, then being able to select multiple cards, perhaps then animated into a stack when I initiate a drag, I could drag them all to their new list in one go. 

I just don't see how this is sufficiently different from the experience of creating a temporary list to justify implementing a new interface feature. I guess the Trello devs agree with me ;)

> I dunno, maybe I'm confused – but if there's a reason for this 'Bulk Actions' powerup to exist, and for it to be voted a top-10 powerup, I can't be too far off the mark? Sure I can just add yet another powerup to my bills, or Atlassian could just buy it like you did Butler. 😉

I don't work for Trello, this is the community board.

> All that said – and obviously I am no UXpert

Neither am I!

> but I feel like it'd be great if Trello cards worked a little more like a file manager. One click to select the card, shift/cmd+click to select multiple cards as needed, and a double-click to open a card. 

I think the thing that I like most about Trello is how much of the functionality is preserved between devices. Trello operates more similarly between mobile and desktop environments than any application I've used (well, any app that's sufficiently complicated anyway).

Adding new interface elements that work well on desktop and work less well on mobile would ruin that, and since using a temporary list already does what you need I certainly wouldn't like to see them make that change.

Most powerups only work on Desktop, so when people add those to their board they're well aware it's a "desktop only" thing -- that's why I use precisely zero powerups despite having been a Trello power user and consultant since 2016.

[Mike Stevens]

I take your point, Iain, thanks. Apologies for the Trello employment confusion too – I saw 'CEO' on your bio card and didn't pay close enough attention! 

[Vassili Bertakis]

I totally second the request for select multiple and drag etc options! It's a basic UI feature nowadays.  Can be done on smartphones too where you show select boxes and a menu of what to do next.

[Zack Robertson]

I definitely second the request to be able to drag and select multiple cards and move the lot at once. This idea of creating a new column, individually, dragging each card over, and then moving the whole list from the new column to the final desired column is not a good solution.

Also, we pay for Trello to use the calendar, but it seriously lacks functionality. Our cards have due dates, and those dates often need to be rearranged. A lot of the time what we need to do is move, one card to an earlier date and shift all the other cards accordingly, but currently the only way to do that is to move each card individually to its new respective date. This is a major pain point for us. Is there some way to move a card from one day to another and shift all corresponding cards automatically? 

[rocketmanblamb]

Holy wow, yes I came back to trying to use Trello after quite a break and shifted to Notion and Obsidian. The lack of this feature surprised me.

It's the ability to quickly reorganize and change properties - for a tool so focused the lack of this ability seems startling.  I at first closed this discussion thinking the power up would help - but then finding the limitations of the powerup ($$cost + have to checkbox each item) I was once again frustrated.

Notion makes multi-select a first class behavior via dragging to select, or Cmd+Shift to click on items, which can then be dragged to set the Card list property or right click and set some other property.

Obsidian is far more basic in this regard since its Kanban feature is a basic plugin that sits on top of markdown, but moving a bulk of cards is fairly simple (although a bit kludgy depending on how messy you get in your manipulation of the source - but still a lot easier than single clicking individual cards - besides if Obsidian is your jam you might be using some other text manipulation to find/replace some feature/tag etc....)

Regardless, the fact that it is not in Trello seems lacking IMHO.

I will add although it might have been mentioned.... learning relevant keyboard shortcuts would be the next best thing to efficiently move through the lists if there is not "multi select" and you must use Trello

https://trello.com/shortcuts

[Jasmin]

Trello is vital to my daily workflow and moving multiple cards in one swipe would be hugely beneficial. We have written multiple scripts in other applications to save way less clicks. As this is a tsk management application I expect that Trello should be focusing on how it's users can manage tasks better and I really can't see any better improvement than being able to bulk manage multiple cards.

What I find frustrating is that, even after moving the lists next to each other so I can easily drag the cards one at a time, Trello totally freezes up and can't keep up with how fast I can drag the cards. So if you are not going to fix the lack of bulk card management at least ensure the application can keep up with how fast people work please.

[Can ULAŞ]

Actually, THERE IS A NOTION of selecting cards; For instance; when we want to change the due dates on a list consisting of 7 or more cards, we have to do it one by one and it's a really time waster.  So a shortcut could be nice :) 

anyway, love using Trello...

Cheers