CSV Importer Now Available

+1 Subtask import is very important

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When we go to use the CSV importer, we get an error message. I wanted to share in case other are experiencing the same error.

Hi @Lauren_McMahon,

Thanks for letting us know about this. Sorry to hear this is happening for you! Before I send this on to our engineers, would you mind helping me rule out any possible browser issues by trying the following steps? This will give our team the right information in order to investigate.

If you’ve already tried some of these, please still try the others. If your issue is not resolved, please don’t hesitate to let me know. Thanks!

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When importing tasks via CSV, importing descriptions doesn’t work.

Test it:

  • Create a list of a few tasks in Asana with descriptions for each task.
  • Export as CSV file.
  • Create a new project,
  • Choose: Add tasks via CSV
  • Upload that same file you just exported
  • Check “Use first row as column names”
  • Choose “Name” column under “Task Name” Menu
  • Uncheck “Include row data in the Task Description”
  • Click “Start Import”
    Everything imports except the task descriptions (which, in the CSV file is under “Notes”)
    You can however get the description to import IF you check “Include row data in the Task Description”, which is useless because then the description for every task looks like this:

Task ID: 614733575527932

Created At: 2018-03-30

Completed At: —

Last Modified: 2018-03-30

Name: Test task

Assignee: —

Assignee Email: —

Start Date: —

Due Date: —

Tags: —

Notes: Here is the description.

Projects: Video Template Test

Parent Task: —

When I try to do an import, it doesn’t map the task due date field on the actual due date. It just makes a note of the date in the description. How can I get it to assign to the actual due date field at the top of the task?

Hi @Editor!

You’ll need to make sure you’re mapping Task Due Date to a date column in the .CSV file. You can see this in the last screenshot of the Asana Guide article - Asana CSV Importer • Asana Product Guide.

Dates need to be formatted in US style as well - MM/DD/YYYY. If you are doing this and it’s not working, I recommend you reach out to our support team. You can do so by visiting Asana Support - Help Center • Asana. Click I’m having trouble with and scroll to the bottom of the page. Then click Let’s talk and you’ll be in touch with our support team. They’ll be happy to help!

+1 I have lot of tasks, plenty of fields and long descriptions - makes it clunky copying all fields to the description field and impossible to manually copy/paste the description task by task

I imported some tasks from a .csv and it gave me an error message and didn’t import a number of my tasks.

How do I know how to fix these errors to import the remaining tasks?

How do I look at the error messages so I can attempt to fix them?

How do I proceed?

thanks,

kat

Hi @Aidan_Wade and @Editor! To avoid having all the raw data in your tasks description, simply uncheck “Include row data in the Task Description” below the "Additional field section. If you need, to you can also refer to the screenshots in this article: Asana CSV Importer • Asana Product Guide

Hi @Editor and sorry for the late follow-up, can you confirm what error message you’re getting?

I second everyone above requesting subtask import. While you folks are on it, I would like to add a request for multi-level subtasks import… This would be helpful for transitioning from Google Tasks csv to Asana. Also, please make sure to support UTC time data (UTC 2018-01-01 12:01), and that other fields like “Description” can be populated from any column in the csv file by choice.

Thanks for working on it. An hurry up! :slight_smile:

First of all, thanks for this great addition to Asana. I have many projects on the go at one time, and they all start from the same list of tasks. I’ve been using templates, but since templates do not allow for auto setting of dates relative to other tasks, it still takes a while to start a new project in Asana. This allows me to use Excel to auto set all the dates for me, and then it’s relatively simple to upload the CSV to Asana.

My requests for improvement to the CSV import feature are:

  • Auto recognize and map columns to various Asana fields. Why do I have to map them every time? If I name them according to whatever Asana is looking for then it would save that step every time we import.
  • It seems like when I import a CSV, it asks me to make a project, then I start the import, then it asks me to select what project I want to use. But I already did that in the last step.
    -I’ll second the need for more fields to be mapped. Description mostly, but Subtasks would be useful too.
    -The importer in Asana mentions Excel files specifically, but I think this is limited to CSVs only? is that right? Having it support excel files natively would be a plus. Even better would be a cut and paste from an excel sheet directly into Asana. That would remove the entire import process of choosing a file.

Thanks again for the continued improvement that’s happening on Asana. I don’t know how I lived without it.

Hi @Maimoona_Block, please add my vote for the Description field mapping too.

Every possible field in a task should be mappable, importable and exportable. I don’t understand why the Asana Team didn’t think this was important and excluded certain tasks fields from the CSV Importer. If it goes into a task, the user is going to want to be able to export & import that field.

Currently, subtask import does not work. I followed your guidelines verbatim to no avail.

1 Like

Check this thread Adding subtasks via csv - #10 by Alex_Thut
You will find more info on that

2 Likes

A post was merged into an existing topic: CSV Importer: Allow to map out tasks descriptions

I have not seen it, but is it possible to assign relationships and import via csv?

Hi @Chris_Devine,

I don’t believe this is possible at the moment but I would highly recommend you to create a new thread on this topic in #productfeedback to allow other users to vote for this feature to considered and implemented!

Hi @Marie,

Regarding “Include row data in the Task Description” …
I cannot find it in Asana CSV Importer • Asana Product Guide.

Can you send me a current article (link) on this option?

Thank you!