Is there a way to reorder comments?

[Carmen Reed-Gilkison]

I use Trello for brainstorming (among many other things) and many times enter things in the comment fields in numerical order. Trello automatically puts the last comment entered at the top - is there a way to reorganize the location of comments within a card?

[Mike · Accepted solution]

Hi Carmen,

Great question! I'm afraid there isn't currently a way to do that, but I'll let the team know that's something you'd like to see in the future!

[GenghisKen]

I agree.  I don't necessarily want to put comments in arbitrary order, but being able to display them in chronological order or the reverse (canonical bottom-posting versus the often-despised top-posting style) would be wonderful. Selectable at the workspace, board, and card level, with each providing an overridable default for the next more-specific context.

If you consider comments to be representative of the card's state, so you see the latest/current state by looking at the top comment -- that's one thing.

But if you want to regard comments as a chronology of the discussions and history of the card, bottom-posting is vastly preferred.

Of course, if they're stored as a linked list, even arbitrary ordering is possible.  Just add a control for 'reverse the current order' and allow comments to be reordered by dragging.

Right now I'm using comments to record exchanges in another tool, transcribing (copying/pasting) each into a new comment.  With the source being chronological, and the comment stream the reverse, it's easy to lose track and get confused.  So being able to move individual comments would be useful here. 🤔

Users: give 'em rope.

[Ahmed]

I think if  sort by last updated  is an option this would solve the problem, 

[Elliot Koontz]

One thing I'll add here -- I think the ability to move a comment to another card would be helpful. I suppose it's as easy as copying the text and adding it in a comment on another card, but I think being able to move comments around more freely would be a helpful feature. 

[Adam Grabel]

I second that. I found this comment while searching for a solution to this issue. When you copy text you lose the date when it was originally entered, which for some is important to retain.

[Iain Dooley]

@Elliot Koontz @Adam Grabel if you right-click the date of a comment you can copy a link to the comment, if you paste that into a comment on another card it shows up with a preview of the comment text

[Adam Grabel]

Great trick to know!

[Iain Dooley]

@Carmen Reed-Gilkison is there a reason you're not using the description, or a checklist to add these items?

[Carmen Reed-Gilkison]

@Iain Dooley, I do use both. I like the comment field because I can add attachments.

[Iain Dooley]

@Carmen Reed-Gilkison when you add an attachment in a comment, all it does is add the attachment to the card then use markdown in the comment to link to it.

The same formatting works in the description, so you could easily just create the comment and copy/paste it into the description which would be nearly the same functionality with a couple of extra clicks:

https://www.useloom.com/share/f32ecb9e3a574436be17bbb1c07ed4d8

If you automated this with Butler you could do:

When a comment is added to a card with label "Record Comments" set the description to "{carddescription}\n\n{username}: {username} on {date}: {commenttext}" and delete the comment

The same code in Trellinator would look like this:

https://gist.github.com/iaindooley/ca81f385efebcb84cf0dd74522388573

Trellinator is an open source apps script integration framework you can see details about it here:

https://trello.com/integrations/#benkoboard

[Carmen Reed-Gilkison]

There is only one description field. I use multiple comment fields. 

[Iain Dooley]

@Carmen Reed-Gilkison So you're saying that each comment is a separate, numerically ordered list of things, and you'd like to be able to re-order each of those numerically ordered lists, and you use comments rather than the description because, in the comments, you can add attachments?

My next question then is why are you using comments for each of these lists rather than cards?

[Carmen Reed-Gilkison]

My lists are courses. The cards are modules. The comments are content. Sometimes I don't need/want to put them in altero orders. I guess I could shift everything up a level, but I wanted to find out if reorganizing comments was possible. It would be handy.

[Iain Dooley]

@Carmen Reed-Gilkison Yes I think that you should definitely consider moving things up a level so boards are courses. This describes a typical workflow for linking boards to "overview" cards:

https://blog.trello.com/related-cards-related-boards

I do this pretty frequently, the automated copying of a board, linked back to a newly created card is actually the use case I demonstrate in my introduction to Trellinator article:

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Marketplace-Apps-articles/Introducing-Trellinator-Automate-Trello-with-Google-Apps-Script/ba-p/925271

If you follow the steps to install that function then you will be able to create a card, have it automatically copy a board from a template, linked back to the card, then you'll have a board for each course and an overview card for each course.

This will allow you to have course cards in various lists (draft, proposed, finalised, or whatever) and also split your modules in each board out per list, and share each course with different people.

I think it's the ideal setup for eLearning rather than having a list for each course ... especially if you're considering using Trello as a means of delivering the course.

I can't see Trello adding the ability to re-order comments any time soon, it wouldn't make much sense. It would be like Gmail allowing you to re-order messages in an email conversation.

[John Skinner Jr]

The best I've been able to do is make a checklist in the card for listing multiple items, and then sort them via drag and drop within the checklist.