Accidentally adding tasks just by clicking blank spaces or clicking "Enter" after creating a task

+1
I agree, this is annoying. Please disable the “Enter” = “New Task” function and “Click blank space” = “New Task”

Too many accidental “New Tasks” that require being deleted. This alone makes me second guess using Asana.

2 Likes

Drives. Me. Crazy. Need fixing NOW!

The hotkeys make this a lot less painful, but it’s still an issue we are constantly having to “fix”.

Yup. Its a bit annoying.
+1

Yes this is my only gripe with Asana so far, tasks shouldn’t be saved if they are blank.

This isn’t the first time I’ve become disappointed with your keyboard shortcut implementation, but I think this one is probably the more frustrating of my issues with it: pressing ↵ always creates a new task, even when this is clearly not the result a user expects from pressing the ↵ key. The result is all our projects teeming with empty tasks without owners. I swear this happens to me at least once every minute while working in Asana, and it looks like I’m not alone. Apparently, this has been around all the way since 2012 (based on this tweet). It’s really a shame it hasn’t been fixed / addressed in all that time.

Hijacking ↵ like this is really bad practice (maybe with the exception of chat applications, but even here most apps make this an opt-in feature only). ⇧+↵ would be a much more appropriate keyboard combination to use for this shortcut. Just as easy to use, but without the unintended side effects (thousands of empty tasks getting created and deleted). Alternatively, make this (or every) keyboard shortcut opt-in or toggleable between the ↵ and ⇧+↵ version.

When can we expect improvements on the keyboard shortcuts?

8 Likes

I think this is one of the best shortcut they have! Please do not change it :scream:

@Bastien_Siebman, please enlighten us as to how you avoid unintentionally creating thousands of empty tasks in your projects?

Nevertheless, none of the solutions I suggested was to just blatantly change the shortcut – either let the users that can somehow handle the misery of empty task hell, such as @Bastien_Siebman, actively opt in to using it, or provide the user with a toggle between enter and shift + enter and everyone will be happy.

1 Like

I did not mean to be rude, very sorry if you took it that way. I am using this shortcut a lot, and I am using empty tasks a lot as well. Every section has basically an empty task before. I realized a while back thanks to this community that it was not common practice at all. What is the issue of having empty tasks in your case?

Customizing the shortcuts would be great, we have some of them unusable on French keyboard for example, so I :+1: your suggestion.

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No worries man, I didn’t take your comment as an insult at all – I was just curious as to how people live with the “empty task” problem. :wink: Not sure I understand what mean with “empty task before”, though – would you mind clarifying? :thinking:

Yeah, I’m also using an international keyboard (swedish) and I saw you supported my issue there – thanks!

Here is an example

Without it, it is all cluttered in my opinion.

Are you saying you are using empty tasks as a separator to add padding before a new section? That’s not really relevant to the described issue, as I’m referring to unintentially creating “empty tasks” due to the clunky keyboard shortcut – that is, issues that you didn’t mean to create.

2 Likes

I do. Then my question is: after a few unintentional creation, people don’t get it and don’t stop using Enter? They are using Enter to “validate” the task in some way?

No, but 99% of the time, I only create one task at the time and the natural behaviour is the press enter in order to “submit” the task. However, this not only submits it, it creates another, empty task as well.

6 Likes

Any news reg. this?

Any news regarding this?

Hi @Oscar_Hillestad and apologies for the late follow-up! You’re completely right, following Asana’s internationalization, we’re having some difficulties with a few of our keyboards shortcut, and I understand where you’re coming from; like @Bastien_Siebman I use a French keyboard and we definitely need to make some improvements.

That said, I’d like to come back to this specific thread in particular. We already have a thread in the Community Forum with 43 votes to this date: Accidentally adding tasks just by clicking blank spaces or clicking "Enter" after creating a task I have gone ahead and merged your post with this thread and I’d recommend voting on the main thread too. I can’t promise if or when this is something we will change, but rest ensured that we closely monitor all feedback and will take them onboard the day we revisit shortcuts. Thanks again for taking the time to share your feedback and give us some context; we really appreciate it!

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Currently evaluating Asana for use within our company. When creating an account and using the product for the first time this was the first thing I did (I’m not exaggerating). I literally created a blank task by accident and couldn’t work out how to delete it.

This is the single biggest comment the team mentioned, too. Disappointed to see this is a common issue and the delay taken to respond here, especially as there’s no promise or plan for a fix.

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This should at least be an optional setting. Main problem in our case is that we’re using the Asana integration with Slack and everytime someone creates an accidental task, this is notified in our linked channels. Super annoying to say the least.

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Agree with everyone else. Now a request for long over a year, this behavior has to go, or at least be an option in settings regarding quick-add immediateness. Common guys, please get this done!