Drag and Drop Emails Directly from Outlook into Tasks

It would save time is there was a drag and drop feature directly from Outlook inbox to tasks as an attachment. At this time I have to save the email to a folder first and then attach. Has this been discussed or it is possible and I am missing something?

Hey @Taylor_Bost, I’m not sure I understand the desire/need to attach emails to tasks? I don’t use Outlook so perhaps I’m missing something - but you can just forward emails to asana and the copy/attachments will be included in/on the task already if that’s what you mean?

I guess if you want the email like you see it in Outlook, you’d have to download it as a pdf or what have you and attach it to the task though…

Thanks for responding.

I understand the function that you can email into a project etc.

But many times when we are working on an ongoing task, we can summarize the progress and then it would be nice to be able to drag and drop an email into the Asana task so that whoever else can pick up where we left off. The email of course being the actually correspondence with the outside party. Many companies still work with outlook - so I mean merely dragging the email directly from Outlook and dropping into the task and the actual email becomes an attached file. For example I can easily drag an email from outlook and drop it in a file on my computer, but can’t do that in a task from Asana. As of now I need
To save the actual email file to my computer and then save it and then attach it.

Does this make more sense?

If not let’s jump on a call if you don’t mind.

Taylor

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Hi @Taylor_Bost

I would echo @Caisha’s suggestion and forward emails directly to projects. The entire email is contained in the task’s description, so if someone needed to see the full correspondence history, it’s right there. It’s roughly the same number of clicks as manually creating the task, switching back to Outlook and dragging it across to the task as an attachment. I’m not sure what you’d gain by having the email in its original Outlook format, as opposed to text within the task’s description.

Mark,

What you are suggesting doesn’t work for what we are doing. Our client correspondence is done through outlook and we try to keep as much of our internal correspondence in Asana. We have individual tasks, not projects, that stay open for periods of time that will already have a description, and multiple comments etc… In certain situations, we need all the team members to be able to have access to an actual outlook file that is attached to the task so that they can jump in and see the correspondence, who is involved and even respond or forward that actual outlook email msg file. The email is part of a chain of communication and updates on a particular task, it is not the task. Does that make sense? So for our purposes, being able to drag an outlook email msg file directly over and drop into a specific task as an attachment would be a big help. Currently we have to save the file our computer and then drag and drop it into the task or just use the attach file function.

Dumb question – are you and Caisha with Asana or just other Asana users helping out? I guess my question is if I really wanted to get feedback to Asana to add this feature how would I do that?

Thanks for your input

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We don’t work with Asana we’re just community members. And the answer to that question is you make your desires known by hitting ‘vote’ at the top of the thread, it’s how they gauge the desire for new features at least in the community.

If you have a dedicated Asana rep for your Organization, you can talk to them I guess, but other than that this is where you make your desires known =)

I would possibly see if @James_Carl’s Sendana can help? =) I don’t use Outlook at all, but it’s built for it:

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I do use the email to ASANA a lot to create tasks. I also use Outlook continuously during the day to correspond with clients. We send minutes, specification documents, and get information regarding tasks via email. I am constantly frustrated by the inability to drag an email as an attachment to an existing project. Emailing it into a project doesn’t work because it creates a new task. I need to add documentation to an ongoing task. In the case of meeting minutes the task has been created with our meeting template when the meeting is scheduled and time has been put towards the task while the minutes are being written.

To get around this lack of functionality, I end up cutting and pasting the body of the email into ASANA or saving the email on my desktop and then going into asana - finding the task and dragging it in.

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I knew I couldn’t be the only one having this issue. Thanks for posting - maybe this will be brought up at some point to Asana

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This one is a big one for me as I find my self double tracking emails and Asana.

The communication in my company is also via Outlook.

Please advise when we could have this feature available?

Thanks

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Our company would benefit substantially with a capability to be able to drag outlook message like a file

Please review… It would truly make a big difference!

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Hi All

I made some research and found a company that sells a product that will do just do this.

Seems like Outlook has an issue that does not allow it to just drag and drop.

Thanks,

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Hey - I was reading another post and found this…

https://appsource.microsoft.com/en-us/product/office/WA104381105?src=office&corrid=109b3179-4ef1-4336-84ef-d7b89cc54cd6&omexanonuid=410aa9ae-f536-4cf3-a5e1-e4901fafe619

The add-in integrates into Outlook and for $20 a year (or $2 a month) you can edit ASANA tasks right in Outlook including dragging attachments!

I’ve only tried it on one task but it seems to work very well.

Thought I’d share. :slight_smile:

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I had a quick look too. Before I waste too much time or pay the small $2 fee for a month, I wondered how you were getting on with this?

When I convert an email to a task in Asana, I most often want to attach the email itself to the task as well.

This way I can easily write back without having to either keep the e-mail in my Outlook-inbox or having to search for it.

So I would like to see an easy way of attaching e-mails to tasks as well. I wish it was possible to just attach the e-mail itself to the task when forwarding the e-mail to Asana in the first place.

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Has anyone purchased the Outlook to Browser tool? Just wondering if it works.

I purchased this tool. It works perfectly!! It is a lifesaver. Find the right app | Microsoft AppSource

@Jeanine_Scott, does Project Buddy save the email as a text-type comment, or an attachment that you have to click on to view? I am trying to understand how it works. Ideally, I would like to see the email trail as comments and not have to click on attachments to view them.

Hi Kelly,

With ProjectBuddy you can only drag attachments from your email and copy text into a new comment on a task. I agree that having a bunch of email attachments on a task is not ideal. I have another tool, that is only $25, where I can drag attachments from an email, or the email itself, into an ASANA task.

I honestly am finding that I rarely use ProjectBuddy anymore. It doesn’t automatically open and doesn’t stay open. it’s cumbersome to find a task in a project. Nothing is alphabetized. Also, I’ve found subtasks don’t show up. It crashes fairly often too. Having said that, I’m hoping they will improve it as they get more users. It would be an awesome tool if it worked better!

Totally agree Martín! I think about this possible feature upgrade way too often.

Would definitely save a lot of time/double work