Migrate from Trello to Microsoft Project

Each Trello board maps to a Microsoft Project project file (.MPP for Project Desktop) or a Project Online/Project for the Web project plan. Board name becomes the Project Name field. Board description migrates as the Project Summary Notes field. Board visibility (public/private) is noted in the migration inventory but has no direct Microsoft Project equivalent since access control is managed at the SharePoint or Entra ID layer in Project Online.

Trello lists within a board map to Microsoft Project summary task rows at the highest level of the task hierarchy. List name becomes the summary task Name; the task's Outline Level is set to 1. Cards under each list become child tasks at Outline Level 2, indented under the parent summary task. List order is preserved by setting the summary task's ID and outline sequence. Archived lists migrate as summary tasks with the IsMarked task field set to true or a custom Archived flag.

Trello cards map to Microsoft Project tasks. Card title becomes the Task Name field. Card description (Markdown) migrates as the Notes field. Due dates on cards map to the Finish field. Trello does not expose native start dates via the core API (start dates are a Power-Up field), so we infer start dates from card position within the list and any relative due-date patterns. When a Trello card contains a cover color or priority indicator, we set the Priority field (1-10 scale) accordingly.

Trello Custom Fields that are part of the core API (migrated from Power-Up to native in 2023) map to Microsoft Project enterprise custom fields of equivalent type. Text maps to Text, number maps to Number, date maps to Date, checkbox maps to Flag, and dropdown maps to Lookup. Legacy Custom Fields stored in card pluginData are detected during the discovery scan and extracted via the pluginData endpoint; this extraction is less reliable and may require post-migration manual audit of field values.

Trello labels (per-board color-coded tags) map to a Microsoft Project Text custom field named TrelloLabels. Each card's set of applied label names joins into a comma-separated string stored in the custom field. The customer chooses at scoping whether to use a native Keywords field or a custom Text field. Label color metadata is preserved in the migration inventory for optional re-creation in Microsoft Project as a custom Flag or number field for color-coding in Gantt views.

Trello card checklists map to Microsoft Project subtasks at the next outline level below the parent card-task. Each checklist item becomes a task row with a Finish date matching the parent card's due date unless the checklist item has an individual due date in Trello (uncommon). Multiple checklists on a single card create sequential subtask groups. Platforms that lack native checklist semantics convert each checklist to a subtask or a Notes block; in Microsoft Project, subtasks are the native equivalent.

Trello card assignees map to Microsoft Project resource assignments. We extract the member's Trello username and email, resolve it against the destination Project's resource pool (for Project Desktop) or against Entra ID users for Project Online. A resource assignment record is created on the migrated task with Units matching the assignment proportion. If a Trello member has no corresponding Microsoft Project resource, we flag the assignment in the reconciliation report for the customer's admin to provision or map manually.

Trello stores file attachments on Amazon S3. We download all raw attachments at migration time and upload to the destination Microsoft Project environment's connected SharePoint document library (for Project Online) or a local file folder (for Project Desktop). File names and card associations are preserved in the migration inventory. Project Plan 1 and above support up to 250 MB per file; Trello Enterprise also has a 250 MB limit. Attachments stored via a Power-Up (e.g., Google Drive embeds) require the customer to re-authorize and re-link in Microsoft Project.

Trello Calendar View is a Premium display layer rendering cards with due dates on a calendar grid. The underlying data (card title and due date) migrates normally as Microsoft Project tasks with Finish dates. The calendar-view configuration itself (coloring, grouping, filtering) does not migrate and must be re-created manually. We flag this in the calendar-view handoff document delivered post-migration.

Trello Timeline View is a Premium feature using card start and due dates to render a Gantt-style display. Start dates are sourced from the Trello start-date Power-Up field which may not exist on all cards. We migrate available date data as Start and Finish on the corresponding Microsoft Project task. Cards without a Power-Up start date receive a Start date inferred from the card's position in the list and the Finish date minus a default one-day duration. The Timeline view configuration does not migrate.

Power-Ups are third-party or Atlassian add-ons that store data in proprietary schemas inaccessible via the Trello API. We do not migrate Power-Up state as code or as structured data. During discovery, we log every Power-Up active on each board and deliver a Power-Up inventory document specifying which Power-Ups have Microsoft Project or Microsoft 365 equivalents (e.g., time tracking Power-Up → Microsoft Project resource assignments; custom card templates → Microsoft Project task templates) and which require manual reconfiguration.