Archive a Section in a Project

any update on “saved closed sections” @Marie?

Not at the moment @JohanW, but I’m keeping a close eye on it and will update you as soon as I have an update!

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So I’m on the new view which feels cluttered but I’m getting used to it, and I’ve noticed:

I can’t check mark sections as complete, so I have a bunch of things I don’t need to see on my screen. Collapsable is nice and all, but once everything is completed I want it archived.

I can’t access sections the way I used to, so all of my description text and comments appear to be missing… especially annoying since we had some back and forth discussion on strategy last week that I cannot seem to find. — Any help finding this??

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Hi @Nicole_Boucher,

You can learn more about Sections and why they don’t contain data anymore in this article: Using Asana List Layout | Product Guide • Asana Product Guide
Note that is your Section previously contained some data, we created a task right below your Section, with the same title, this task will contain all the metadata that your old Section used to contain, so you shouldn’t be loosing any data.

Hope this helps!

I have the new delete section option, but the warning saying it will delete previously contained completed tasks is a bit frightening (and not really what I want). The official way is to move completed tasks elsewhere first, correct?

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Over two weeks ago I wrote about the loss of functionality to complete a section and its tasks and maintain that historical association between section and tasks. It relates to this thread. Also, I just updated that post to 1) make it more clear, and 2) add a workaround (extra work). Here’s the content of that post:

Background

The new sections behavior update (Lists/Boards) rolling out now breaks many List workflows that rely on easily completing no-longer-needed sections.

This is because a section can’t be completed, only deleted, and not if it has any tasks within it (even only completed tasks). Usually one wants to keep completed tasks around for history, not delete them. And one doesn’t want to lose their membership in the section which provides context, historically, so moving to no section is not helpful either.

The only option I’m aware of with sections now is just to shove them down at the bottom of your project so they’re as out of the way as possible. They could be preceded by an additional section called “IGNORE EVERYTHING BELOW” which might help some, but it’s all ugly and undesirable.

A workaround is not to use sections. I often use a custom field instead, which in many cases is better than a section because you can sort/group by it, but for many of these workflows, adding custom field options (the equivalent of adding a section) is too painful, or otherwise a custom field is not a good substitute.

Another (painful) workaround in order to replicate the removed functionality of maintaining the association of completed tasks to the section they belong to is to:

  1. Create a new project called “<Project name> - Completed”,
  2. Create a section of the same name as the one you’re about to delete,
  3. Change the project association for all of this section’s tasks from “<Project name> v <Section>” to “<Project name> - Completed v <Section>” thus moving these tasks to a separate completed/archive project,
  4. Delete the section from “<Project name>”.

This forces you to have two projects where you used to only have one, but allows you to maintain the section membership for completed tasks/sections that once could be done in a single project. (This is an unfortunate example of Asana creating work about work, I’m afraid.)


And another similar report by someone else:

And another:

I’d guess this is breaking a lot of workflows.

Thanks,

Larry

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I agree with the previous posts… We need a way to archive sections. I’m not looking to delete all of the tasks, as I still might need to search them. It’s frustrating to not be able to get rid of a section when everything in it is complete. :grimacing:

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Hello all, I share everyone’s frustration here and wanted to share a interim hack while this bubbles to the top of the DEV list.

If you’ve been using Sections primarily to break up the Tasks in a list view visually (and don’t necessarily need them ‘related’ to a Section), you can use Milestones in lieu of a Section to accomplish the same effect.

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This change has been a bit of a nightmare. I can now occasionally delete a section, but the ability to delete seems to come and go. There’s no easy way to see if section contains completed tasks, As my project has thousands of incomplete tasks (used over a long time) finding and deleting them to delete a section is nearly impossible. One way we’ve been using sections, is to create one for every day and then mark items complete. Now it’s really difficult to remove the days, once that day has passed. Also, I don’t necessarily want to delete tasks that existed under those days in case I need to find them later. I agree there needs to be a way to archive sections (Or even allow dragging a section with or without it’s tasks to another project, so they can manually be archved)

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Feedback on New Section / Column Heading Element
#productfeedback

Hi @Marie. Sorry for two posts from me tonight but this is just so painful. I am putting this feedback here in the forum because the behavior of the new Section/Column headings has clearly been designed to support the use case of switching between boards and lists. With, I will unfortunately have to say, some really annoying consequences.

Use Case:
Each department has an annual operating plan or strategic plan. It is comprised of all the milestones that they are responsible for, broken out by quarter.

I was excited to see the list/board switch feature roll out to my company recently. Some of the teams like the Board view better for their strategic plans. Frankly I support ANYTHING that gets them to like Asana. So that’s a win.

So tonight I was going through each of the department’s strategic plans getting everyone all set up for the new strategic plan we’re rolling out. Simple task while I’m watching TV - add the new quarters between now and FY2023.

BEFORE THE UPDATE
Sections looked like this:

What was great about this was:

  1. It was easy to move milestones (or as we call them, “rocks”) from one quarter to another, using the sections.
  2. when the quarter was over, you just closed the section and it was hidden from view. Project stayed nice and neat.

Enter the New Section behavior.

New sections are like the house guest who has vastly overstayed their welcome but is not taking the social cues that maybe it’s time to go home.

The Quarter is OVER. But due to the new behavior of Sections (e.g. you can’t close them) what on earth do you do once all the work below them is done?

I have another project that tracks all the high level items for our electronic health record roll out by program location. Once that program location is done and live, why on earth does the section heading need to live on in perpetuity?

I’m writing this well aware of the work around you, dear reader, might be wondering. “What’s the big deal? Why don’t you just delete the quarter section heading when it’s done?”

Do you think getting rid of house guests is that easy? Come on.

You can’t delete the section header, because you have to MOVE all the tasks (whether they are done or not) OUT of that section before you’re allowed to do that now.

So now Asana is asking me to move the tasks…where exactly? The only place to put them is at the top of the project where there is no section heading.

Oh and I have to teach that now very stupid work around to every person in Asana: “I"m sorry but for some reason you now have to move every single task under that section that you’re done with all the way to the top of the page so it’s now unassigned, and then you can call an Uber for the house guest you don’t want.”

Sigh. So that’s my feedback @Marie.

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Hi @Kristian_Sekse and thanks for sharing your feedback with us. The ability to archive Sections is so far the biggest feedback we received from customers who have access to List < > Board. We already have a thread on this topic, so I’ve gone ahead and merged your post with this topic as your use case illustrate perfectly this idea. We’re still in the process of rolling out this new feature, but just like for other launches, we’ll look into some improvements in the future, so your feedback is super important; thanks for sharing it!

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Did I read that right? Asana is going to first make sure everyone has this broken feature and then fix it?

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Please fix the issue without worrying about who has the new version yet. That way, when more users have it, they can still mark sections complete like they have always been able to.

For me, it doesn’t matter who has it yet. I have it, so my workflow is broken and there are dead sections sitting around and waiting for Asana to let me mark them complete. To be clear, I don’t want to delete the sections, since that doesn’t make any sense. Marking them complete is what has always worked well for everyone here, and should continue to work well. Also, section descriptions were very useful and those need to be returned. Also, being able to make a section simply by adding a colon at the end of a task title was perfect. Why was working functionality removed? All this functionality could work while still being able to switch between a board and list view. When switching to the board view, it would just interpret the sections as it does now. I don’t get why this has to be explained…

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Would really like the ability to mark sections complete or archive please. Having a bunch of empty sections hanging around is problematic for me.

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This is definitely and urgently needed since the introduction of board <> list views (which in itself is great). However, we still need to be able to “complete” a section as we used to.

They should follow the setting displaying only open, only closed or all tasks.

Please bring this feature back asap!

Thanks & Regards
Fabian

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Hi Marie,

I am currently running into an issue. Recently today I had four(4) tasks that I marked complete under a Section. My problem is that with so many sections on my list I cannot delete the section without it deleting the completed tasks as well(which I do not want to do as I need them saved in the system). I do not want to have a stack of sections with no tasks underneath them, that will just simply pile up and become extremely cluttered for me.
If you have any solutions for me I’d really like to know. Thank you!

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we definitely need to complete a section! We were not warned that we will be forced to use sections in a complete different way than we did until now. I have sections all over my projects which I need to get rid off. But I do not want to delete all the tasks underneath.

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This is very urgently needed. Since our team has been put on to these new sections our organization has gotten much worse. Any workflow that relied on having sections become “complete” or processed in any way is now unworkable. We do not want to lose comments and history on tasks in those sections. The work around of showing all tasks and moving them out of the section before completing it adds unnecessary steps to what used to be a single simple action and also can cause confusion if those tasks are ever uncompleted.

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Indeed, removing sections DELETES all tasks and there is no trace back, the heck?!

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I second this as well, because our tasks are connected to airtable and xero

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