Deleting Planned Effort and Effort Spent columns

A single project template includes two columns - Planned Effort and Effort Spent - which contribute to visualising resource management in the project dashboard. I don’t need these columns in a particular set of plans but they cannot be deleted in the column heading to clean up the board view. Can anyone suggest why this is and how to fix it? Many thanks!

Hey Trevor! :wave: When you say that the column heading cannot be deleted, are you looking to delete the columns themselves or just change the names?

For changing the names, you can right click on the column header to type something new.

For deleting the columns, if you hover over the column name, the three dot icon appears and at the bottom of the menu when you click it, you’ll see “Delete column”.

If this isn’t quite what you are looking to do, can you attach a screenshot of the issue you’re seeing so I can better understand how you want to clean up the board view? :blush: Thanks, Trevor!


Hi Charlotte. Thanks for asking. This screenshot shows the issue. The Planned Effort and Effort Spent columns don’t have a delete option. I’m assuming this is because they are linked to something else, but I can’t find anything in their settings that shows that.

Hi @ADProgrammes - are you an Owner of the board? Perhaps the board permissions are setup that structure changes are not allowed (unless an owner).

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Hope this helps!
Mark

Thank you for the suggestion Mark. At the moment, I am the only owner of the board and am not restricted by any permissions.

I am also trying to understand why I can’t delete those two columns.

Having the same issue. When trying to delete either column, Monday.com says they are required and cannot be removed. Frustrating trying to use this template but not being able to delete those columns.
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@CharlotteK Any ideas here? The Planned Effort and Effort Spent columns are “required” and “cannot be removed”, per the Monday.com interface.

I am also experiencing the same problem. I have full owner/admin access and have been able to add/delete any other columns I’d like.

@CharlotteK did you manage to track down a solution to this issue please? Many thanks.

Hey Trevor! So unfortunately, these columns are what we call “entities” in the CRM product; they are not able to be removed because they maintain the infrastructure and flow of the product’s features.

While you can’t delete the columns, you should be able to “hide” the columns as you can with any other one!

Our apologies for the inconvenience; we know this is not the solution you were looking for.

Thanks for the update @CharlotteK - interesting and slightly surprising to hear, as this was a project template not necessarily related to CRM. Might be worth structuring the template library so it’s clear when templates are product-related and cannot be fully edited.

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Hi Charlotte, I am wondering if there is a solution to this yet please - this is a project template, being used in Projects not CRM - and for myself I am showing a total effort from subitems, so I dont need this already added Actual effort column but cannot delete it.