Importing from Trello
Bringing a Trello board's cards into a project as tickets, one list per status, from the board's CSV export.
A Trello board becomes one project: each card a ticket, each list a status, labels as labels, and the due date and last activity kept. It goes through the CSV import, which this page walks through with Trello's own file. What Trello does not put in the file cannot come across: comments, checklists, attachments and the card's creation date are not exported, though the counts and the attachment links can be kept as fields.
Export the board
Open the board menu (the three dots at the top right), choose Print, export, and share, then Export as CSV. The file downloads at once and holds every card on the board, archived ones included.
Exporting as CSV is a feature of Trello's Premium and Enterprise plans. A free workspace can export the board as JSON only; a spreadsheet can turn that into a CSV file, but the column names are then yours to choose, and the mapping below will need your help.
What the file holds
| Trello column | Becomes | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Card Name | Summary | |
| Card Description | Description | Trello descriptions are Markdown; choose Markdown as the format. |
| List Name | Status | Each list becomes a status, added to the project's workflow. A list called Done is a done status, Doing is in progress, and anything else is to do. |
| Labels | Labels | Trello writes each label with its colour, so Bug (red) becomes the label bug-(red): a label is one word, and its spaces become hyphens. Rename the labels afterwards, or edit the column first. |
| Members | Assignee | A ticket has one assignee. A card with several members would become a placeholder named after all of them, so map this column only when your cards have one member each; otherwise keep it as a field. |
| Due Date | Due date | |
| Last Activity Date | Updated | |
| Card ID | Original id | Not a number, so tickets are numbered from 1 and the id is kept with the ticket's record. |
| Attachment Links, Checklist Item Total Count, Checklist Item Completed Count, Start Date, Archived, Card URL | Fields, if you keep them | Tick keep unmapped columns as fields to have them. |
There is no creator or creation date in the file: every ticket is reported by whoever runs the import, and created at the time of the import. Comment Count is a count only; the comments themselves are not exported.
Import it
- Under Administration, CSV import, upload the file. The page shows the first rows and the suggested mapping, which recognises every column above.
- Check the mapping. Unmap Members unless every card has one member. Decide about Archived: the file holds archived cards too, so either delete those rows in a spreadsheet first or keep the column as a field and filter on it afterwards.
- Choose Markdown as the format of descriptions.
- Dry run, read the report, then Import.
The project gets a status for every list on the board, and every ticket lands in the one its card was in. Trello's lists are the board's own order; the statuses are added in the order the file names them, which project settings can change.
After the import
- Labels named after Trello's colours are worth renaming under the project's labels.
- Attachment links are addresses on Trello, kept in a field; the files themselves stay there.
- People named in Members become placeholders, claimed when they are invited.