Ability to drag and drop tasks in the new sidebar

I have been blissfully unaware of this problem until now, because I only use the Starred projects area of the side bar. Then finding that drag and drop hasn’t been working for the past couple of days I reported it to Asana as a bug and they replied that it’s a permanent loss of functionality.

I expected that people would be up in arms about this, given how user friendly the drag and drop functionality is. So nice to come across this thread and see that I’m right!

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I am so frustrated that Asana would take this away! I am using the work around by using the bar at the bottom of the screen, clicking the pencil, and then editing the project. However, when they load into the new project, they are in reverse order. Why is that? How do I fix this? Does anyone have a workaround?

Also. The bar at the bottom is great if you mutli select tasks, but what if I just want to move one? What a waste of time to have to go into the task and edit the project one by one. Is there an easier way or something I missing.

Asana. I am begging you reconsider this. It was one thing to only allow this for the starred projects, but then now to take it away for ALL projects, this may be the nail in the coffin for me.

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This is very important feature for my workflow. Please fix it. Also alternative method also seems broken. Cause you can’t just type name of different project when you want to add task to it and since a have a lot of projects I need to manually find it in a huge list of project which is very time consuming and annoying. Here’s demonstration of the issue https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftLJefezB2o

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Seconding everything Brock says here. I’ve been a huge Asana fan, but this is a massive hindrance to my workflows, and adds many more clicks to my day. Please roll back these feature removals!

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I can’t even drag and drop to re-order my starred projects! Used to be able to order them in a custom way… now that feature is missing too! All of these drag and drop options are so important to workflow. Please bring them back!!

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Briefly describe (1-2 sentences) the Bug you’re experiencing:
I am unable to move a task to a different project by dropping it onto the sidebar. This used to work and is one of the most common features I use.

Steps to reproduce:
Select one or more tasks with your mouse. Drag them to a different project on the sidebar. Nothing happens.

Browser version:

What version of Asana are you using (Basic/Premium/Business/Enterprise)?

Upload screenshots below:

Hi @David_Carr , welcome to the forum :wave:

This has been reported by several users and is no longer considered a bug so I’ve merged your post into this thread, which you can vote on (purple button, at the top left of this thread).

Unfortunately, it is currently the expected behaviour and it is unknown whether Asana will decide to bring back this ability. Also dragging into the Starred section seems to be no longer supported.

Note, you can always use the multihoming feature to add tasks to other projects. This will not move them, unless you remove the task from the source project within the task details pane.

Thanks for the information. A big step backward for your product imo.

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@David_Carr , it’s not ‘my product’. :sweat_smile:

Just to clarify, I do not work for Asana, I’m a (volunteer) Forum Leader and an Asana Solutions Partner (which means I independently provide consulting and training services to clients) which is what the orange badge represents.

Not being able to select multiple tasks and move them into another project in my sidebar is a massive issue… it just took me an HOUR to manually move each task, something that normally use to take me 5 seconds… Please add this feature back. Horrible horrible error on Asanas side.

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Asana, please bring this feature back!

Thanks,

Mike

I don’t get why someone would make this the “expected behavior.” Freakin’ backwards, IMO.

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Note: Not a solution but marked as such to elevate a key reply

For anyone struggling with the loss of dragging tasks into projects in the sidebar, below is the ‘intended’ way that I believe Asana would like us to add or move tasks from one project to another.

If you use the below method, I believe you will find it much better because:

  • You have better control over which project the tasks are moved to - reduced risk of error
  • You have the option of ‘adding’ or ‘moving’ the tasks from one project to another
  • You have the option of choosing which Section of the destination project your tasks will go into.
  • You can add/remove tasks to/from multiple projects in one go.

  1. Click & drag to multi select your tasks. Or use click, then hold shift, click on the last task.
    Or use Ctrl/Cmd key to select/deselect individual tasks.

  2. In the black action bar along the bottom of the screen, select the ‘Project’ icon.

  3. Click ‘+ Add to projects’ and search for your destination project (Project B), or type it’s name to search for it.

  4. Select the destination project’s Section, into which you want your tasks to be added to.
    If instead you want to ‘move’ the tasks to the destination project, go to step 5.

  5. Click on the X of the source project (Project A) to remove the tasks from it - so you have essentially moved the tasks from Project A to B.

Yes, I hear you say this takes more clicks and more steps BUT for the reasons mentioned above, it is much ‘safer’, providing more control and reducing the risk for error.

Let’s try and work with what we’ve got :heart:

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Dear Asana,

The removal of the ability to drag and drop tasks between projects sets your product back a decade in terms of usability. I have thousands of tasks that are frequently moved between various projects based upon workflow and priority. I am certain that many users rely upon this basic capability and I cannot imagine this is a significant technical limitation such that removing it is required.

It is essential that you restore this feature. Adding ways to move tasks between projects for use cases where more robust capabilities are helpful (such as assigning to specific sections within a project) are fine, but not at the expense of the ability to rapidly reorganize tasks via drag and drop.

I have seen software companies make poor UX decisions in the past, but none as poor as this decision. you will lose a lot of customers with this change. At least based upon how I have always used Asana, this change renders your application unusable.

Whoever made this decision does not appear to be close enough to how many users interact with Asana.

I hope you’ll hear the feedback from users, and also recognize that few people will take the time to express their concerns here. they will either churn now, or churn over time without expressing their input as they don’t believe their input will result in a change. You may not lose enterprise clients overnight, but if I were advising companies I work with (and I do) on which applications to use, Asana would not even make the list based upon the lack of this capability.

This is the first time I have found myself posting such a request in a forum, and I have been building software companies since 2007. The removal of this feature is so surprising that it prompted my first ever post. I am doing so because posting this is easier than switching to another solution, but if this issue is not resolved, I will require another solution.

We hope you hear the feedback from your customers and promptly address the concerns.

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Hi Richard,

I am using this method and it is working. I am having two issues:

  1. When I select a large group of tasks (25+) and move from one project to another, when the tasks transfer to the new project, they are in reverse chronological order from the original project. Am I doing something wrong?

  2. Is there an easier way to move singular tasks without needing to click into details, “X”, and then selecting the new project?

PS. I know you are a volunteer, so appreciate your assistance :slight_smile:

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Hi @Brock_M_YVR , I’m glad this is working for you.

  1. The sorting order may have to do with the sorting options of the destination project. Click on the ‘Sort’ button (next to Add task, in the top left) to arrange them by Due date or anything else you prefer, that makes sense to you.
  2. No, but you could enable the ‘Projects’ field from the ‘Hide’ button (top left next to Filter, Sort). From the ‘Projects’ field you could type in the destination project but the problem is that this will only add the task (not move it), so you would then have to go to the destination project, enable the ‘Projects’ field there, then click into it to ‘X’ the source project that you want to remove the task from. Not Ideal!

What you may prefer, is to set up a Rule, in combination with a custom field that could act as a ‘button’, to move a task to a specific project (or projects). Setting these up may take about 5 minutes but can save you a lot of time if you want to move many singular tasks individually.

If you are moving tasks to numerous destination projects

Create a single-select field (in your source project) with the option names as per your destination project names.

It could look like look this for moving tasks to numerous projects:

Then create a set of rules (requires Business tier and above), you need one rule for each destination project, so that when a value from your custom field ‘Move to project’ is set to a particular project name (from your options), then move (or add) that task to the destination project (along with it’s destination section). Each of your rules would look like this:

If you are moving tasks to a single destination project

As per above, but your custom field could have a single :heavy_check_mark: option (or any other emoji that makes sense to you) and the field title would be specific to that project’s name, i.e. 'Move to Marketing Campaign"

Then your rule would look similar to the above, but instead use the field ‘Move to Marketing Campaign’ with the single :heavy_check_mark: option.

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This is very very helpful! Appreciate your detailed and very prompt follow up. I think for challenge #1, you are correct, I believe this may be related to sort.
For challenge #2, these are great ideas. I will give them a go!

Thank you again!
Brock

Hi @Brock_M_YVR - Just FYI - the order they show up in the new project is also affected by the order in which you select and copy them. If you select them from the bottom to the top, they will move in reverse order. If you do top to bottom, they will go in the correct order. That means that in addition to the sorting preferences in the new project, this will affect the order they are moved to the new project.

For some reason, I have a habit of bulk selecting from bottom to top. Support helped me realize that that was the reason they were in reverse order. Tested and it’s correct.

Oh. My. Goodness! BINGO! This is it! Until you said this, it had not occurred to me that this is what I have a habit of doing also (bulk selecting from bottom to top). I was struggling so much trying to understand why only sometimes this happened. Thank you so much for taking the time to post. This is very helpful.

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I gave up and decided to migrate to todoist. With ChatGPT I’ve wrote python script that converts csv provided by asana to csv that can be imported in todoist. I’m not sure that it transfers all the data you need, but it does transfer all the data I need. It will probably not transfer information about people it is assigned to, but since I’m the only user, I don’t care.
asana2todoist.zip
alternative link:
http://vintsevych.com/xlam/asana2todoist.zip

Here’s how to use it.

If you don’t want to download random files from random guy I wrote code for that script in comment section of that youtube video.

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