I would like to select a range of cells/custom fields in a project’s List view, then use keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V) to copy the selected values from one range of cells/custom fields to another range of cells/custom fields. Ideally, this functionality would allow users to copy data from one project to another and would operate similar to Excel’s copy and paste functionality.
Use Case (setup): I recently created a new project in Asana from a project template. The project template contains 30+ tasks, along with a custom field “Estimated time”. Each task is assigned a default value for Estimated time, which is based on that task’s effort (that is, the value is not uniform).
Use Case (issue): In my newly created project, I need to reduce each task’s estimated time from the default value to a lower value because the project has smaller scope (compared to the template/default project). I faced a similar situation on a past project also created from the same template, where I manually updated the Estimate time values manually. I attempted to return to that past project, select the Estimate time column, copy those values to my clipboard with Ctrl + C, then select the matching range in my current project and paste those values with Ctrl + V, but was unable.
Alternate solutions:
- After selecting each task in my new project, I attempted to use the Edit fields option to transfer the information in my clipboard, but the Edit fields feature is restricted to applying the same value to each task. In the example above, the values are not uniform, so this feature does not address the issue.
- I also attempted using the project export feature to extract the Estimated time values from the older project, followed by importing them into my new project, however, this only created new tasks, rather than offering me the option to update existing tasks. Afterward I attempted to bulk copy and paste the values from the new tasks to the existing tasks (using a multi-cell selection), but I am unable to do so with custom fields.