Copy subtasks from one task to another

Since we provide our products in 12 languages, our translation team gets involved at some point in every project.

Currently we have a subtask or task called “Translate” somewhere in nearly every project. Under “Translate” there are subtasks for each translator. It would be great if I had a “Translate” task template with all the subtasks that I could drop into a project or task.

Is that possible?

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Hey @Bob_McNeel; Michael from Asana here.

This is a great idea! At the moment we only have the ability to create a template at the Project level. However as a workaround I encourage you to make a copy of your Translate Task, ensuring the subtask box is checked in the popup window that appears when you copy your Task. Once the copy has been created, multi-home the copied Task into your new Project. Once this copy has been added to the Project (Tab+P) then remove it from the Original Project so that the copied Translate Task only “lives” in your new Project exclusively.

The process of multihoming the Task into your new Project, and removing it from the first Project you copied it from feel like an additional step, however it will still save you the time & effort of creating a new Task with all it’s necessary subtasks from scratch. Additionally, if you create a template with this Translate Task already present, all Projects you make a copy of containing this Translate Task, will copy over in all your subsequent Projects.

That said, the ability to make a Task Template is an interesting idea I encourage you to post for in your #productfeedback category for our developers to look at & consider the viability of in the future.

Hope this makes sense!

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Hi Bob,
In addition to what Michael said, once your former template task “Translate” lives in your new project you can also transform it into a subtask with drag and drop.

@Alexis explained here how to do it.

Best
Sebastian

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Yes. I saw that. It was helpful. I came up with a workaround based on some of those ideas.

I’m not sure my suggestion is the best solution, but it seems like it would be nice to have a way to copy and move a task (with our without subtasks) or group of tasks in one step.

Drag with copy might be a solution. Right drag or drag with a modifier key… something like that might do the trick.

Also, I might just be using Asana all wrong. Under the Marketing Team, I have just the major projects like Blog, eNewsletter, etc. Under those, each blog post or eNewsletter is a task with subtasks. Maybe it would work better is each blog post, eNewsletter, etc. was a new project.

I thought it would work better as tasks since each blog post, newsletter, etc has a very short turn around. Often less than 3 days, including writing, layout, proofing, translation, etc.

I’m just thinking out loud here… aka babbling.

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We have a similar need, Bob, and furthermore we want to be able to apply the subtasks after the task has been created. (So we don’t want to have to remember to create it from a template to begin with.)

The approach we’re testing now is to use Zapier and tags. We create tags that look like “Checklist:Object” etc. Then we create Zapier routines that will create a series of canned subtasks whenever that tag is applied to a task. Works good so far, but is a bit of a pain to set up, and costs a bit of $ to Zapier.

Just seconding. Could definitely use this.

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Figured out a way to do this pretty easily if all you care about are the titles.

  1. Click-and-drag select (i.e. text highlight) all the subtasks from the source task, and paste them out into Notepad
  2. Make sure each item is one to a line in Notepad, and then copy the whole lot again
  3. In your target task, create a new subtask so there is one new, blank subtask in total, and paste the lot from step 2 into its title box - Asana will automatically create one subtask per line
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I just set up a section called “Task Templates” that I can copy and add to projects as needed – it’s quite nice!

I have multiple subtasks with instructions in each one, so it was important for me to be able to add subtasks to an existing task. The workaround I discovered is:

  1. Copy the title of the task
  2. Create a new task from the template that has all the subtasks and instructions
  3. Paste the title of the existing task as the title of the new task with subtasks
  4. Merge the two tasks and you end up with the subtasks in the existing task

If the existing task already has some but not all of the subtasks, create the new task from template, delete the subtasks that already exist, then merge the tasks to bring over the new subtasks.

This is a great tip and one that I have enjoyed for years. HOWEVER, I noticed that this no longer works with the ‘new’ Project Templates. If you try the same technique while editing a Project Template, the pasted SubTasks show up as return delimited lines within the SINGLE SubTask.

Is this the expected behavior or is it a bug or just missed when the new Project Templates were developed?

Same, @AjD. Really hoping this gets sorted out!

I solved it!!! Not click bait, I mean it! So here is what you do:

  1. Go to the template card you want to copy the subtasks from
  2. Click on one of the subtasks
    #3 IS THE IMPORTANT STEP
  3. Place your cursor to the far left of the subtask
  4. Click and drag to group all of the subtasks you want to copy
  5. Then hit copy
  6. Then proceed tops wherever you need to

What should happen when you do step 4 is that the whole subtask, not just the word(s), should highlight.

1 Like