# Collapse the parts of the board you are not using

**Done** holds every request the board has ever finished, and it takes a third
of the screen. Collapsing it is not a change to the board. It is a change to
your view of it, and nobody else sees it happen.

## Steps

1. On the board, find the chevron at the right edge of the first or last
   column's header and select it (its label reads **Collapse column**). From the
   keyboard, Tab to the chevron and press Enter or Space.
2. To bring the column back, select the chevron on the collapsed strip
   (**Expand column**). After a keyboard collapse the focus is already on it,
   so the same key undoes what it did.
3. With swimlanes on, select the chevron in a lane's header to fold the whole
   row away (**Collapse lane**), and again to open it (**Expand lane**). It
   answers the same two keys.

## What you should see

A collapsed column shrinks to a narrow strip showing its name and its count as
vertical text. What the remaining columns do with the space depends on where
they already are: if they were sitting at their minimum with the board
scrolling, the scroll gets shorter; if there was room to grow, they widen into
it, up to the width a column stops growing at. The strip is still a drop
target, so a card can be dragged onto a collapsed column without expanding it
first.

A collapsed lane hides its columns; the lane header, its name and its count
stay visible, so a row you folded away still tells you how much is in it.

Both choices are stored per user and per board, in your own Azure DevOps. They
are still there the next time you open that board, and they change nothing for
anyone else who opens it.

![A collapsed column, reduced to a labeled strip](https://anykanban.com/docs/_img/collapsed-column-strip.png)

## Notes

Only the first and last column offer the chevron, the same restriction native
boards apply, though a column that is already collapsed always offers to
expand. Collapsing a column collapses it in every swimlane row at once, since
it is one column. Two things worth knowing: a collapsed column that is also
configured as split does not accept drops, and a dependency arrow is not drawn
when either of its two cards is inside a collapsed column or lane.

## Related

- [Cap work in progress in a column](https://anykanban.com/docs/shape-the-board/cap-work-in-progress/)
- [Give expedited work its own lane](https://anykanban.com/docs/shape-the-board/give-expedited-work-a-lane/)
- [Get one row per work item type](https://anykanban.com/docs/shape-the-board/one-row-per-work-item-type/)