@Caro Syson - In the Free Plan, only the 3 most recently created boards can be edited - the rest will be set to VIEW-ONLY. More on this here.

You can delete any boards that you no longer need.

If you are unable delete the boards (because you do see the "Delete" option) this is because you are not the board owner. If you are a Team Admin, you can delete the board owner, at which time you can assume ownership of the deleted user's boards, and can then delete the boards.

And if you are not a Team Admin and cannot delete the user, you can duplicate a board that is VIEW-ONLY and the dupliated board will be new and therefore editable.

thanks so much - i am a team admin so have the access to do all tasks

i did not want to actually delete any of my boards however as i use them for reference at different points

So ideally i want to find out how i can put a board to VIEW ONLY manually 

and then once i have it like that, how i can change a board of my choosing to be reactivated again?

i am ok to only have 5 working ‘live’ boards at any one time of course on the free plan

@Caro Syson

So ideally i want to find out how i can put a board to VIEW ONLY manually 

You cannot do this. This is a limitation of the Free Plan. All you can do is duplicate a view-only board toake it "new" and then it will be editable.

Other strategies:

1. Merge all boards into three boards by copying-pasting all of the content into three boards.

2. Creating another Free Plan with another email address and creating three editable boards there.

3. Upgrading to the Consultant Plan for $15 USD/month (or just creating a new team and selecting the Consultant Plan).

If you are seeing the message that you can have 5 editable boards, then you have an older/legacy Free Plan, which you probably created well over three years ago. Lucky you! I have a fee of this plans myself.

This 5-board plan may make it easier to amalgamate a number of old boards into one or two "archive" boards.

hey those are handy options! Thanks so much Robert

i didnt even see the Consultant plan - that isnt showing for me (in the UK?!)

I tried to merge a few boards but couldnt do this - guessing once they are on VIEW ONLY thats not an option - or is there a workaround?

if i were to upgrade for 1 month to do these tasks, can i downgrade once i have sorted out my boards do you know?

thanks for all your help

One more note about moving to a paid plan: Because you have a 5-editable board Free Plan, if you do decide one day to have a paid plan, rather than upgrading your Free Plan, you can use the "Add teams" action to create a new team:

thanks - i am unsure on how the add teams helps me access my current locked boards?

are you saying if i start a new account then upgrade at some point, that i can merge these 2 accounts in some way?

You should see it on the pricing page (when creating a new team or upgrading) when you scroll down:

You could

1. Create a brand new board, e.g., call it ARCHIVE1
2. duplicate your oldest board to make it editable,
3. open the duplicate select everything - Ctrl/Cmd+A will work, but you have to unlock any locked content for it to be included in the select all (you can right-click on a blank spot on the board and use the Unlock all action)
4. open ARCHIVE1,
5. paste everything into that board
6. repeat steps 2-5 for all VIEW-ONLY boards until you have all of your content in active boards.

Yes, you cancel your subscription after one month.

Once you upgrade a Free Plan to paid subscription, if you later decide to cancel your subscription, once the subscription ends, the plan is paused. You can either upgrade again or downgrade back to a Free Plan. In your case, since you have an older Free Plan that allows for 5 editable boards, you are not guaranteed to still have that capability should you upgrade and then downgrade. Instead, I would suggest that you create a new team. Once you do this, your Miro account profile is a member of both teams and you would move boards between these teams.

You can’t merge teams, but you move boards between teams.

thank you Robert so much for taking time out of your Thursday to help me on this - i will try these things when i am next in the office 

The next round is on me if you are in London!

@Caro Syson - You’re very welcome, and I very well may take you up on that offer! (Same to you if you are ever in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada!) /=S=/