Top 10 Best Keyboard Shortcuts for Trello

Trello is an amazing cloud-based productivity application that brings fun and much-needed ease to project management. Individuals, teams, small businesses, and large organizations use it to organize work, enhance collaboration, boost productivity, and improve efficiency. It’s a highly rated tool that allows users to prioritize and organize work using boards, cards, and lists. 

Trello is not only a great project management tool but also holds some hidden productivity tricks for users – keyboard shortcuts. It also integrates with numerous tools like Bridge24 for Trello to boost its experience with advanced reporting and exporting features.

Trello Shortcuts to Power Up Your Productivity

Did you know that you can fully control Trello with keyboard shortcuts? You can boost your productivity in a snap – the shortcuts enable users to hit specific keys on the keyboard and slash the number of steps, clicks, and time needed to complete a particular action.

Read on to learn how you can become more productive when using Trello and save time by tapping keys instead of dragging around with a mouse.

1. Insert a Card Anywhere with ‘n’

When you have a brand new board that needs cards, press ‘n’ on the keyboard. This action will add a new card to the list. If you have new cards that need to be added to a board that is already in progress, mouse over a card, tap ‘n’ on the keyboard, and it will automatically add a new card right below. With this method, you won’t have to scroll down to the bottom of your lists to insert a card.

2. Navigate Anywhere Around the Board with ←↑↓→

Using the ←↑↓→ keys can help you get to any place you want on the board. Although they are some of the simplest shortcuts, there are very helpful. Pressing the left or right arrow keys will select the adjacent cards on the board. Clicking the up arrow will take you to the card above the current one, and clicking the down arrow will select the card below the current one. You can also press ‘Enter’ to open a card and ESC to close the card.

3. Assign Yourself with the Spacebar

After creating new cards on the board, you will need to assign those tasks to team members. If you want to allocate one of the tasks to yourself, hover over a card or open the card and then press the spacebar. If you are added to a card, tapping the spacebar will remove you from it. To delegate work to a team member or employee, open a card or hover over it and tap the ‘a’ key. This will display a list of all the team members.

4. Keep Track of Due Dates With ‘d’

Deadlines must be met o achieve project targets and keep things moving. Setting the due dates of tasks allows teams to organize themselves and be more accountable. Hover above a card or open it, tap the ‘d’ key, and it will open the due date selector. From there, you can customize your due dates to make sure you always deliver on time.

5. Create a Label with the ‘l’ key

When your board has too many cards, it becomes hard to distinguish, which is which. This is where labels come in. Trello allows you to color mark cards to categorize them and improve visualization. Open a card or mouse over it, push the ‘l’ button, and it will reveal the label menu. From here, you can choose which labels to use. Even better, you can use the number keys 0 and 1-9 to set labels effortlessly. Each number stands for a label color.

6. Double Click to Create a New List Quickly

Although there is no key for creating a new list, you can double click on any empty space on your board or in between two lists, and a new list will be created. This is much easier than scrolling to the right until you get to the end of the line of your lists.

7. Archive a Card with ‘c’

To keep things organized and avoid cluttering your board, you may need to get rid of some cards at some point. To archive a card quickly, navigate through the cards using your arrow keys and press ‘c’ when you are on a card you want to archive. Luckily, you can always retrieve the archived cards whenever you need them.

8. Pull Up the Filter Menu with ‘f’

The filter function is one of Trello’s strengths. It allows users to use a filter to only view particular cards. To open the filter function, press ’f’. From here, you can sift through cards by search term, label, team member, or due date. If you want to search Trello for a keyword, hit the “/” forward slash.

9. Move Card to Adjacent List with < and > Keys

If you want to transfer a card to the adjacent list, use < and > keys. It will swiftly move the card to the list on the right or left. Pressing  “,” or “.” will move the cards to the bottom of the adjacent lists left or right.

10. Edit Title with ‘t’

When navigating over a card with the arrow key or hovering over it, you can press ’t’ to edit card titles. The command will immediately activate a pop-up with the title ready to be edited.

Conclusion

Trello is a flexible, intuitive, and easy-to-use platform. Its shortcuts help you work faster, boost your productivity, and enhance your experience. To learn more of its shortcuts, just hit the question mark key ‘?’ while on a Trello board and it will bring up the keyboard shortcuts menu. 

One more great thing about Trello is that you can combine it with numerous tools to improve its capabilities. Bridge24 for Trello is designed to enhance Trello’s capabilities by making it easy for users to export cards to Excel and produce interactive charts and graphs for their projects.