Remove Custom Field from a Specific Card

[Charlie Cipolla]

I created a (text) Custom Field that's only applicable to some of the cards on the Trello Board, but it's appearing on all the cards.  And I don't see the ability to delete the custom field from the other cards that do not need it.

Is there a way to:

1 - Add the Custom Field to certain cards only, or

2 - Delete the Custom Field from the cards that do not need it?

[Iain Dooley · Accepted solution]

@Charlie Cipolla Custom fields are at the board level, so if you want fields to change you'll need the cards to move to different boards. This may or may not be practical depending on your workflow -- when you add more boards you always risk complication unless you manage it properly, especially effective if you employ automation.

What workflow outcome are you looking to achieve? There may be an alternative.

[Dean Morgan]

@Iain Dooley 

I seem to have come across a number of requests for this in the community in my search to essentially achieve the same as Charlie, and in all instances I have found the response to be that custom fields are board-specific rather than card-specific.

However I have recently received an email from Trello including a blog post from @britt_joiner (https://trello.com/b/M0YqG8f0/daily-habits-goals-tracker) whereby the daily journal set of cards have the custom fields but the rest of the board doesn't? It'd be great if this could be explained by someone - if it could be achieved I'm sure there would be plenty of people eager to use this way of working :)

Thanks in advance any who may be able to help!

[Iain Dooley]

@Dean Morgan What you might me noticing is that custom fields only show on the front of the card when a value is set on them and some fields can be set to not show on the front of the card at all 

[Dean Morgan]

That makes perfect sense @Iain Dooley but if you open up the link I pasted  - I'm assuming you've perhaps not? - you will see that on the cards in the daily journal list have the custom fields, visible when the cards are opened up. Yet if you open any other cards within the board, the custom fields are not visible at all? 

Thank you for getting back to me!

[Iain Dooley]

@Dean Morgan I opened the link to a Trello board and all the cards I looked at had the same custom fields (granted I didn't do an exhaustive search) 

[Melissa Lowry]

I just need to clarify ... the only way to edit/remove custom fields is to either have more than one board or use the daily journal cards?

[Demis D. John]

@Iain Dooley 

To answer the question of "why do people request this", here is my use case:

I am trying to have one board that shows different types of Jobs (microchip mfg., versus equipment repair). The workflow is nearly identical, but the data for the different job types is very slightly different by only one or 2 "custom fields".

For example only Microchip Mfg. has a "customer", while Equipment Repair has "which machine" instead.  

Whereas I could make a separate board for each type of work, that would then lose the ability to prioritize either type of Job for an employee (for example, I'd lose the ability for one board to show that I want you to repair this Gizmo Inc. machine. before you start that microchip for Sharon Inc..) - I haven't yet found a way to have multiple boards be "viewed" as one agregate board.

So instead, it would be easier to have a Custom Field for "Customer" that is only on the "Microchip Mfg." template card, but doesn't show up in the "Equip. Repair" cards (or template).

[Ushuaia]

Hi,

Is there a workaround for this???? It doesn't make sense that for every custom field that you create, you have to have this fields in other cards too!

[Elisa Cerquozzi]

Any update on this yet?

On my board, I'm looking to use custom fields only on certain lists. 
I don't want the option for custom fields to display on every single list. 

Thanks for any info!

[Patrick Bland]

+1 on this - would be nice if Trello had the ability to create card types in a board. So you could have Card Type 1 with the following custom fields in the card: A, B, C, D. And Card Type 2 would have the following fields: B, E, F, G.

[Jennifer Lange Schneider]

Yes! Please!

[Falcon]

Hi guys, I have been using Trello for many years and is recently applying the Custom Fields tool on my new board. I share the same feeling that it is inconvenient as the user cannot decide which level (board/list/card) the custom fields should apply.

According to the above discussion, seems that currently the only method to remove the custom field of a specific card is moving it to another board?

[Andi Tran]

I am also wondering if there's been an update to this. I like to have the ability to customise my cards and lists within a board, and I would prefer to have less clutter when I open the cards (if I need to) as not all my lists require the same custom fields. As an idea, would it be possible for us to choose at what level the custom field should apply (i.e. board, list, card)? As there are many people requesting this feature, it sounds like it's something that is wanted. Thanks!

[Demis D. John]

Actually, you mentioned that this ability is nearly implemented fully - an Observer will Not see custom fields with no value.  

If the "Custom Fields" plugin had an option to "Hide if no value" for members as well, then perhaps we'd have the feature we are looking for?  (Although then you'd have trouble editing it's value... not sure how to solve that.)

[Dean Morgan]

@Iain Dooley perhaps it just loaded up differently on my end for whatever reason- if you can't see it, it would make sense!

Really appreciate you taking a look and feeding back to me. It's a shame it's not working as I thought, I was hoping I'd stumbled across a solution!

Thanks again,

Dean

[Iain Dooley]

@Dean Morgan I see the discrepancy. I opened it initially on iOS which shows the custom fields on all cards, even though they're not editable.

If you open it on Desktop (app or web) you will not see the custom fields on the cards that don't have the values set because you're not a member of the board and can't edit them.

If you copy the board then you'll see that the custom fields appear on all the cards.

You're right though: this request comes up a fair bit.

I wonder why though: what's the use case for it?

[Dean Morgan]

@Iain Dooley that makes perfect sense! thank you for looking even further into this, I really appreciate it! 

For me, it was to emulate the habit tracker described in the board I shared with you though I must confess, before finding the board in question, I'd not really found a use for the powerup!

Thanks again! Take care :) 

[Kali McCullough]

Hi @Iain Dooley I'm also having this issue, and it also cropped up after reading @britt_joiner's post about her daily habit tracker. I have one board designed as an Eisenhower matrix, with an added "daily journal-esque" log card. I want to use the journal card to track water intake, exercise, etc., so I created custom fields. However, I don't want or need the water intake, exercise, etc. fields showing up on my "Urgent/Important" or other cards. Is there a better way to accomplish what I'm looking to do, without creating a separate board for habit tracking? I know myself, and if it's on a different board, I'll never go look at it. Thanks for your help! 

[Iain Dooley]

@Kali McCullough Instead of using a card for your daily journal/log, I would use a list for Daily Journal, then have a card for each thing you want to track. So you have a card called "Water" and every time you drink some water, just add a comment with how much. Comments automatically log the date/time you record them, so you'll have a full history of your water intake. You could then use the API to report on that, and the most recent comments will be at the top so you can see how much water you've been drinking recently.

You could even get fancy and set up your IFTTT SMS channel with hashtags like "water", "exercise" etc. and have them add a comment to each of those cards in your board so you can do it by voice :)

Hey siri 2 cups #Water

[Kali McCullough]

Thanks @Iain Dooley  that's a good idea but it doesn't fully solve my issue. I'm looking to trend the interaction between different data points - for example, how does my sleep change when I'm not drinking enough water? How does the phase of the moon affect my daily mood? That is much easier to track with one card per day that concatenates all data points into a snapshot, rather than needing to search through every "subject" card (i.e. water, moon phase, mood, sleep) and manually connect the dots between them. If this is something that's in development, I look forward to being able to pilot it! If not, I may just have to completely redesign how I imagined using Trello. Thanks!  

[Iain Dooley]

@Kali McCullough If you're looking to aggregate and report on the data, one of the best methods is using Google Sheets, here's an article on the subject:

http://www.littlebluemonkey.com/blog/automated-trello-reporting-using-google-spreadsheets

[Ewa Chang]

Has this issue been solved yet? Or anyone figured out how to work around it.  I also would like to have a daily journal card like demoed by @Britt_joiner but the custom fields showing up on all cards is annoying.  I guess I could create a separate board that has just the journal list.

[Elisa Cerquozzi]

Any update on this yet?

On my board, I'm looking to use custom fields only on certain lists. 
I don't want the option for custom fields to display on every single list. 

Thanks for any info!

Iain Dooley @Iain Dooley 

[Yeshodhara Baskaran]

Have any of you found a solution to this?

@Elisa Cerquozzi and @Ewa Chang ?

[Hannah]

I would also love to be able to hide custom fields in one list while still showing them on the front of cards in another!