What about Deleting Lists?

[Deleted user]

This seems to me like no-brainer in product design: if you have the ability to create something, you should have the ability to delete it.

In the case of Lists, however, you can create lists and archive them, but you have no way of deleting them.  Maybe that's because boards aren't truly designed to serve long-term projects where lists may come and go, but it's really frustrating when you initially set up a board and you decide, "This list isn't actually required", you're stuck with it in your archive like inherited wedding china.

Here's a specific use case where this is causing a headache:

• We've created a board to manage a department's tasks.
• There's a list for every member of that department team. (e.g. "John's Tasks")
• Users manage their own lists so we can all stay aware of their tasks.
• When an employee leaves the team, we can archive their list, but we will never have a need to return it to the board.

So here's my question to the Trello team: do you have "Delete Lists" as a feature development on your roadmap?

[Iain Dooley · Accepted solution]

@[deleted] you can't even delete lists via the API! But you can move them to another board. If you move a list to a board called "Employee archive" then you can just leave them there or you can periodically close and permanently delete that board.

This Trellinator function would automatically move any archived list to an employee list archive board:

https://gist.github.com/iaindooley/28619b924d4c360a7d93c8710f8ba205

You can see how to set up Trellinator here:

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

It doesn't look like the Butler power up has retained the "when a list is archived" command trigger that used to be present in Butler Bot -- @Katrin Anger is that true?

[Deleted user]

I hadn't thought of that!  What a great idea to move lists to a board that essentially becomes a trash can.  Now that you mention it, it's funny that the code to delete a list exists within the application but it's part of a "Delete Board" function.

[PeterD]

[deleted]

[Jodi LeBlanc]

Hi @[deleted] I love your analogy of the inherited china. I archive my lists when they no longer have use, and never think of them again. At this time I do not see a way to delete a list, like you can a board or a card. Have you considered recycling the lists. As you know when you click on the title you can change the name. So for example when John leaves you can rename his list to the new person, or when you go to create a new list you can train individual to refurbish the existing list by sending to board and modifying the name.

Thanks,

Jodi