How to copy, move and convert subitems in monday.com

By Arnav Ghatage, founder of Fortimus · Updated 30 October 2026

People land here wanting a few different things, and monday.com treats each one differently. Sort out which one you are after and the rest of the page is short.

Which one do you want?

Duplicate an item with its subitems

This one is built in and it works the way you would hope: duplicate an item, a group or a whole board, and the subitems are duplicated too.

1. Click the three-dot menu on the item, or tick the item and use the bar at the bottom of the board.
2. Choose Duplicate, and pick whether the updates come along.
3. The new item appears below the original with its own copy of every subitem.

Use it for a checklist you run again and again: a launch, an onboarding, a site visit. The two sets are independent from the moment they exist, so ticking off a subitem on one has no effect on the other. That is exactly what you want for a template, and exactly what you do not want for shared work.

Copy subitems to another item

monday.com has no single button for this, so it takes two steps: duplicate the subitems, then move the copies under the other item.

1. Select the subitems with the checkbox on their left. You can pick subitems from different parent items at once.
2. Click Duplicate in the bar at the bottom of the screen. The copies appear under the same parent.
3. Select the copies, click Move to and pick the item they should sit under.

You end up with two independent sets of subitems: edits on one never reach the other, so the two lists drift apart over time. Syncing them is the way around that.

Move a subitem to another item

Moving relocates the subitem instead of copying it: it leaves the first item and nothing stays behind.

1. Select the subitem, or several, with the checkbox on the left.
2. Click Move to in the bar at the bottom of the screen.
3. Pick the item it should sit under.

To get a single subitem onto another board, convert it to an item first (below), then move that item with Move to board.

Put subitems onto another board

Subitems travel with their parent. Move an item to another board and monday.com transfers its subitems automatically.

1. Tick the item, or open its three-dot menu, and choose Move to board.
2. Pick the destination board and group.
3. Map the columns, for the subitems as well as the parent.

Two things to know before you do it on real work. Moving is not copying, so the item leaves the original board. And any subitem value whose column does not exist on the destination board is dropped in the move, so set up the matching columns first.

Convert a subitem to an item

Convert turns a subitem into a top-level item on the same board.

1. Select the subitem and click Convert in the bar at the bottom of the screen, or choose Convert from the subitem’s menu.
2. Map each subitem column to a column on the board. If the board has two columns of the same type, pick the one each value should go into.
3. Confirm. The subitem is now an item on the board.

Check the columns before you convert: a value with no matching column on the board is deleted. To put the new item on another board, move it there afterwards with Move to board.

Convert an item to a subitem

This is how you move an item under another item. It works like the conversion above, in reverse.

1. Select the item and click Convert in the bar at the bottom of the screen, or choose Convert from the item’s menu.
2. Pick the parent item it should sit under.
3. Map each column to a subitem column. Values with no matching subitem column are deleted.

Worth knowing: copying a column value between a parent and its subitem is a one-time copy. Change the parent afterwards and the subitem does not follow, and the other way round too.

If the task should stay an item on one board and also show up as a subitem on another, converting is the wrong tool. Mirror Item can put an item on another board as a subitem under a parent there and keep the two in sync. See how to mirror subitems in monday.com.

Add subitems to subitems

You can, on a multi-level board. monday.com supports up to four levels of subitems, so a subitem can have subitems of its own, and so on down to the fourth level. Multi-level subitems only work on newly created multi-level boards, so an existing board can’t be switched over. The steps are in monday.com’s guide to multiple levels of subitems.

When a copy is the wrong tool

Every native option above produces a snapshot. That is fine for templates and reorganising. It falls apart when two teams need the same subitems: delivery ticks off a task, the client board still shows it open, and within a week nobody trusts either board. The give-away is that you find yourself updating the same subitem twice.

What you want then is one set of subitems that appears on both boards. That is what Mirror Item Multiple Boards does: the subitem is not copied to the second board, it lives there, and an edit in either place is the same edit.

Step 2: Open the item and turn on Add Subitems

Open the parent item, click the Mirror Item Multiple Boards tab, choose the target board and group, and switch on Add Subitems before you add it.

Step 3: Click Add Item

The item and its subitems appear on the second board with their structure intact. Edit a subitem on either board and both show the change. New subitems added later sync too.

Subitems do not count towards your item limit: a parent item and all its subitems count as one.

Put a single subitem on another board as a full item

A subitem does not have to stay a subitem. Open the subitem itself, click the Mirror Item Multiple Boards tab and add it to another board, where it appears as a top-level item. Managers get each task as its own row on a leadership board instead of buried under a parent, and it stays in sync with the original subitem both ways. The same subitem can also sit under two different parent items at once.

Do it automatically

To stop doing this by hand, open the Automation Center on the board, search for "mirror item" and pick a subitem recipe, such as mirroring every new subitem to another board as an item. New subitems then land on the other board on their own.

Frequently asked questions