Suggestion to have deleting projects delete both unassigned and assigned tasks unique to the project.
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Hey @Rocky_5, here is a great post about the best practices when deleting a project that might be helpful.
If you also wish to delete assigned tasks you can for example use the multi-select in list view to unassign them first.
I second this one (and I know others would as I have seen other forum posts about it). It seems odd to have tasks still assigned when a project is deleted. It is way too manual of an ask for us to go and remove assignees before deleting a project.
5 Likes
Hi there, how do I delete all tasks tied to a deleted project? I was the project Owner, and I need to clean up the floating tasks.
Hi @Melissa_Bednarz , if you recently deleted the project, you should have received an email with a link to restore it within 30 days.
I would restore the project in order to unassign or delete all tasks properly, before deleting the project again.
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Thank you, Richard. I found the link and was able to restore the project.
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We have a quite elaborate setup with a project template with pre-multi-homed tasks for several departments.
For various reasons (demonstration, testing, removing of duplicate) projects get created that then later get deleted.
When deleting a project, asana keeps assigned tasks, and tasks that belong to other projects.
As the tasks are useless without central project from the template, it doesn’t make sense to keep tasks that are multi-homed nor tasks that are assigned.
“Properly” deleting a project now requires a cleanup routine to both un-assign tasks, and remove tasks from other projects.
As people are making mistakes, this leaves a orphaned tasks and the purely wasteful activity of having to clean up tasks over various projects that shouldn’t even be tasks anymore.
Besides the waste of the clean-up, this leaves people confused, as the backbone project the task belonged is no longer connected, but this isn’t something that gets registered at the task activity.
To prevent this, we will need to train our people. In Lean vocabulary I’d say this is “required waste”, as it only is seems needed because of how Asana currently works.
That’s why I feel we should at least get the option to delete the entire project with all associated tasks, regardless of whether tasks still have assignees or are added to other projects.
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I agree, and voted. Perhaps an adjustment to this dialog which displays when you ask to delete a project could be made:
My experience is that customers ignore this dialog (a common problem with confirmation dialogs).
I think there’s an opportunity to solve many problems at once with such a change:
- Highlight, and explain much more clearly than the first bullet, what tasks will become orphaned, and
- Offer the options @Jan-Rienk suggests as part of this dialog
Thanks,
Larry
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This is apparently in development.
I’ve merged this topic into the existing one; votes will be merged.
Thanks,
Larry
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When I delete a project I need to then go delete 100 tasks manually that were assigned to that project… Why not just delete the tasks when deleting the project.
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Hello @Kieran_Smith,
welcome to the Asana Community Forum 
Here is a great post I recommend reading through: Best Practices when deleting a Project
In general however you might wanna consider archiving completed projects instead of deleting as you never know you might need the info in the future. However I agree if a project has been created by mistake for example then this can be very helpful
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Now I realized why my team has so many phantom tasks. My team would show me tasks that look like they were created from a template but were not associated with any project. There was no history in the All Activity tab of these tasks. This was happening often enough to be frustrating and it was cluttering their My Tasks to the point they didn’t want to use it. I couldn’t figure out why.
Why do we have the ability to delete a project if the tasks aren’t also deleted? It defeats the point of deleting if only the project name is deleted, and makes it impossible to troubleshoot why these assigned tasks exist in My Tasks without being attached to a project.
It makes sense that a multi-homed task wouldn’t be deleted, but not for tasks that are only assigned. I’m confused about the point of deleting a project if assigned tasks aren’t deleted.
There are a few reasons why my team deletes projects instead of archiving them:
- Someone duplicated a project, then realized that a template would have been a better option so they delete the duplicated project
- Someone created a project, then it was canceled, so they delete the project
- Someone created an example or test project to demonstrate dependencies or timelines, then deleted it when it was approved (my most recent use case)
Please, I’m a single PM on a team that’s still not entirely on board with Asana and snafus like this undermine my credibility. Others on my team create projects and I’m sure they also delete them, so now I need to do some educating and one-on-one cleanup of My Tasks for others.
This is actually “in development,” which means we can likely expect it within, say, the quarter.
I’ve merged this topic into the existing one; votes will be merged.
Thanks,
Larry
2 Likes
It would be fantastic if, at the admin level, we had the ability here to determine who could delete projects, as we do for controlling project memberships and workflow/appearance. Then we could set up a process for requesting project deletion as well as project creation. I would love love love to be able to limit who can create and delete projects and portfolios.
