How to see your total Trello card count (no extensions needed)

There are times you might want to see how many active Trello cards you have on a board. Perhaps you’re trying to measure your progress, or just comparing card counts with a coworker. Below I’ll show you a few different ways to see your total Trello card count without installing any extensions.

See Trello card count

The following steps work on the web version of Trello and in the Trello app. I also recommend this over Chrome extensions, as you don’t have to give out any permissions to third parties. Data privacy is something you should always be concerned with when it comes to project management software.

How to see Trello card count with shortcut key

You can use a simple short key in Trello to quickly see total card counts. Just press the letter “Q” on your keyboard. This will minimize everything and show you the total number of cards in each column. It will not include archived cards. You can then press the key again to return to your normal view.

"Q" shortcut key in Trello
“Q” shortcut key in Trello

How to see Trello card count with Dashcards

You can use the Dashcards power-up to see and display the total number of cards in each column.

Step 1

First, enable the Dashcards power-up.

Step 2

Click the three little dots at the top right of the column you want to track. Then click “Track with Dashcard.”

Track with Dashcard
Track with Dashcard

Step 3

It will add a new card with a cover that is pinned to the top to track the total card count in the column. You can also customize the image to be whatever you want.

Total card count per column in Trello
Total card count per column in Trello

How to see Trello card count Search Cards

Update: Unfortunately after a UI change, this trick no longer works.

Step 1

In Trello, click “Show Menu” on the right. Then click “Search Cards.”

Search Trello cards
Search Trello cards

Step 2

Type the following:

*
Trello search all cards
Trello search all cards

You will then see the total number of search results. This is the number of active Trello cards on your board. It also shows the number of active cards at the top of each list.

See total number of Trello cards
See total number of Trello cards

Summary

Hopefully, this little Trello card count trick helps! If you have any questions about it, drop them below in the comments.

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Brian Jackson

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7 thoughts on “How to see your total Trello card count (no extensions needed)”

  1. Thanks for the description, however I don’t see that search cards option anymore in the menu. The “more” function doesn’t help either. Where has it moved to?

    Reply
  2. It’s wild that this isn’t built into Trello. It seems like such an obvious and easy thing to include.

    If you turn on the filter function (hit Q as a shortcut), you can see the number of cards on each column. That’s what I’m doing now when I’m curious how many cards are in a column (which is nice since I mostly use Trello as a form of to do list!)

    Reply
    • Wow, I never knew this Stuart! Thanks for taking the time to comment. I went ahead and updated the post with that option. I also updated the Dashcards section which is another good solution.

      Reply

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