How to create a Trello card via email

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Learn how to create a Trello card for project management by sending an email to your account.

Home page of Trello - project management application.
Image: Julio Ricco/Adobe Stock

Trello is hands down my favorite kanban solution. Not only because of how easy it is to create and use effective boards, but because of how many features it includes. Even with the free account, you’ll find more bells and whistles than you’ll ever probably use.

SEE: Hiring kit: Project manager (TechRepublic Premium)

One very handy feature found in Trello is the ability to send an email to a board to automatically create a new card. This is incredibly useful when you’re on the go or spend more time in your email application than Trello itself. I’ve started using this feature and it’s considerably simplified my workflow.

What you’ll need to create a Trello card from an email

The only things you’ll need for this are valid Trello and email accounts. It doesn’t matter what email service you are using, and it doesn’t matter if you’re using a free or paid Trello account.

How to locate your board email address

The first thing you must do is locate your board email address. To do this, log into Trello and navigate to the board in question. From there, click the three-dot menu and then click More.

From the new menu (Figure A), click Email-to-board settings, which will reveal the email address you are to use to send an email to the board in question.

Figure A

Accessing a Trello board's email address.
Accessing a Trello board’s email address.

The email address will look something like this:

[email protected]

It’s a complicated email address, so you should probably create a contact with an easy-to-remember alias.

Now that you have the email address, let’s see how those emails are created.

How to create a Trello board from an email

The important thing about this feature is knowing what pieces of the email map to the card fields. Here’s how it works out:

  • The Subject of the email is the card’s title.
  • The Body of the email is the card’s description.
  • Any attachments are automatically added to the card.
  • Labels can be added in the subject in the form of #label. It’s important to know you cannot have a space in a label. Instead of #To Do, you would want to use #ToDo or #To_Do.
  • Members can be added to the subject via the @username format. Trello will strip the username out of the subject and add them as members to the card.

For example, you could send the following email to your board address:

Subject: This is my new card #TechRepublic @jackwallen

Body: I’m writing an article titled “Jack Wallen shows you how to create a Trello card by sending an email to your account.”

Attachment: Screenshots

Once you send the email, the card will appear on the board in a few seconds and should appear exactly as you’d expect (Figure B).

Figure B

My Trello task card from an email was successfully created.
My card from an email was successfully created.

When you use labels, keep in mind the label must already exist. If the label doesn’t exist in your Trello board, it will remain in the card title.

The attached images also become the cover for the card as well as an attachment, and there is a limit to the size of attachments you can send. If your attachments are larger than 10MB, the card will not be created from the email.

Another cool feature is that Trello will generate an email address for each card. You can find that email address by clicking the Share icon within the card and copying the email address under Email For This Card.

If you send an email to that address, the subject of the email will become the title of a note and the body will become the body of the note. That note will appear under the Activity section within the card (Figure C).

Figure C

Adding notes to a Trello task card via email makes this even more efficient.
Adding notes to a card via email makes this even more efficient.

Conclusion

That’s all there is to create a Trello card from an email. This feature makes working with Trello even more efficient. If you spend a good deal of time in and out of your Trello account, you can simplify that workflow with a simple email client.

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