How to Export a Trello Board to JSON (and What to Do With the File)

Every Trello board can be exported as JSON for free, on any plan. The hard part isn't finding the button — it's that the file you get is thousands of lines of nested objects that no spreadsheet opens cleanly. This guide covers where the export is, what the file really contains, and the quickest way to turn it back into a board you can use.

Where the JSON export is

Open the board and go to the Board menu (the three dots in the top-right corner), then Print, export and share → Export as JSON. Trello downloads a single file named after the board. There is no size limit and it works on the free plan; the CSV export, by contrast, is a paid feature and drops most of the structure.

You can also fetch it directly: append .json to the board URL, so trello.com/b/AbCd1234/my-board becomes trello.com/b/AbCd1234.json. Same file, no clicks — handy if you need several boards.

What's actually in the file

The export is one JSON object for the whole board. The keys that matter:

• lists — every column, with a pos value that fixes its order and a closed flag for archived ones.
• cards — a flat array (not nested under lists). Each card points to its list via idList and carries the title, the description in Markdown, start and due dates, label ids, and dueComplete.
• labels — names and colours; cards reference them by id.
• checklists — also a flat array, each with its checkItems and their state.
• actions — the activity log. Comments live here as commentCard actions, which is why they are easy to miss.

Two things are not usable from the file. Attachment links expire — they are signed URLs that stop working shortly after the export — and member ids only make sense inside your Trello workspace.

Turning the file into a board

You could write a script that walks the arrays and re-links cards to lists, labels and checklists by id. Or you can drop the file into Decknote, which does exactly that. On your dashboard, click Import from Trello and pick the JSON. The import brings over:

• Lists, in their original order.
• Cards with titles and descriptions.
• Start and due dates, on the right calendar day.
• Labels, with Trello's colours mapped to ours.
• Checklists, including which items were ticked.
• Comments, and link attachments.

Nothing is created until the whole import succeeds, and at the end you get a report of exactly what was skipped — archived cards, expired file attachments, members — so nothing vanishes silently. The full checklist is on the Import from Trello page, and if you are weighing the move itself, this guide walks through the migration end to end.

Before you export

A few minutes in Trello save a lot of clean-up afterwards. Restore any archived cards you still need, because the import skips archived items on purpose. Re-upload important files somewhere permanent, since the export's attachment links won't survive. And export one board at a time: Trello has no bulk export, and one file per board keeps the imports easy to check.

Create your free Decknote account and try all of this on your own board — no credit card required.