A few weeks ago, I noticed that a CSV project export was missing some tasks. After quite a lot of research and a few emails with Asana support, I was informed:
One thing to note is that CSV exports are truncated at 3000 lines as the export limit. This is why you are seeing tasks missing.
This is quite problematic, for a number of reasons. The biggest issue for us is that we use the project exports 1) to backup our editorial calendar, and therefore need them to be complete, and 2) to create an interactive database in Excel that pulls together data from a few different sources. Limiting the export to 3000 lines (without clearly indicating what tasks are being omitted) makes it very difficult to keep both of these things up to date.
I recognize that there may be technical challenges to exporting especially large projects, but I think there are a few different solutions that would be better than the current approach, including:
Clearly communicate the necessary row limit for project exports, indicating which tasks were included and which tasks were excluded. (OK)
Automatically break the export into multiple CSV files. (Better)
Increase the limit for CSV exports from 3,000 rows to something like 50,000 rows. (Best)
@Matt_Tully, thank you for your feedback, and for sharing your awesome use case with Asana! Iâm interested to know more about your interactive database, and what kind of information/reporting you get from that database, too.
To your specific question, we truncated the export for performance reasons. That being said, two workarounds that might help:
You could generate an Advanced Search and export that search instead. So, for example, you could only export Tasks that are due this week, or were modified last week, etc. in order to narrow in on the number of Tasks you need to export.
You can also write an API script that would allow you to export the entire project. If youâre interested in learning more abou that, Iâm sure @Matt_Bramlage, our Head of Developer Relations, can help with the details
Hey Sara, Iâm noticing my CSV is being truncated now to 2000 rows. It used to be 3000 and now itâs 2000. Was there a change?
The workaround is very annoying and we had a good process going using the .csv that Iâm afraid we have to revise now. Can you please increase the limit?
Just want to add my voice here, truncating advanced search and project results is absolutely miserable. Why would you assume everyone using Asana can write some code/software if we want to make a backup or archive of our projects? The full organization export is not a sufficient replacement, it lacks project info, and it also relies on some level of coding knowledge to get much use out of.
If you want users like me to feel good about using Asana permanently, you must provide us an easy way to access all of our information. You canât bury it behind code.
I understand wanting to improve performance, but at what cost?
@Sara I have another use case for this feature. We have custom fields in a project called KPI. These fields record the client name and estimated number of minutes to complete the work. I add tasks to this project (in addition to their âactualâ project) and record the extra data, I then export just the KPI project and use a pivot chart in Excel to see time allocation for the team as an overview.
Truncating at 2,000 lines is a significant limitation, sadly Iâve just discovered this by chance. A bigger warning on export would be helpful. The export from a search doesnât output the data in the same way (column order) - is this something that can be specified?
Iâm getting data truncated at 1,000 rows of data. This is entirely because of relatively detailed subtasks in tasks that get duplicated upon completion.
In my use case, I am trying to track my personal task completion and am not getting an accurate picture due to exporting more information than I truly care about. I would ideally like to export just parent task information. This issue exists whether I export from the project or from a search.
@Sara any updates on how to work around this export limitation? Like others on this thread, I do not have coding expertise, so would prefer a non technical solution.
I am also now being truncated at 1000 rows after it has been 2000 on Oct 1. I am pulling monthly data to track our teamâs performance. They create a new task for each item we process. We have been just under 4000 rows of data recently, so I was pulling bi-monthly reports, but now I will have to pull weekly reports and âmatchâ columns (the exports move columns around that I have to manually manipulate). This is likely too much work and I will simply look for another platform. Shame as we have been using Asana for years now.
I am getting the same behavior when exporting to Google Sheets. I had to break it in three parts to unify them back on Google Sheets. This workarround are with days counted once our taklists are growing fast, we may need to break it in more distinct queriesâŠ
Hi there, Exporting Asana reports with distinct date ranges. I also found that collumns dont allways come in the same order. I had to create a supporting sheet to reorder the way i wanted.
This is a huge issue since most of our internal analysis of the project requires us to have complete details and truncating at 2000 really bummed me out. Requesting to have option to download all rows of data without any additional hassle.
@Sara This is unbelievable. If there is a limit to how many rows I can export in CSV, why in the world would the system not indicate that in some way when the export is occuring? I figured this out by chance today and can only assume that Asana hides this fact because it would have been a dealbreaker for us moving to this platform.
What can we do to increase this limit?
We are doing similar things to keep track of estimated hours for work using pivot tables. Completely agree that truncating like this with NO WARNING (canât stress that enough) completely kneecapped me today and means I have to come up with another workaround.
