duplicating tasks change original

English Forum Tips and Tricks
1

Hello

when we duplicate tasks or assign an existing task to a new project, we find that if we change the task in anyway in the new project it changes it in the old project.How can we stop this from happening, as we have complex tasks, however each project is slightly different.

thanks chris

2

Welcome, @chris39,

To make separate tasks, you should Duplicate the task (one way is to right-click and choose “Duplicate task”).

You would not want to add an existing task to a new project because that would create two references in different places to the very same task, which doesn’t sound like what you want.

And that may be the source of your problem: Perhaps the task you’re duplicating is now a member of two projects causing the problem.

You want to 1) Duplicate task, then 2) probably make the task only be a member of the new project.

More info is here: A task’s associated projects.

Larry

3

Hi Larry

thanks for the quick reply, we do know those ones, what we where trying to do was to add the task to another project. And have them exist seperate to each other. the reason for this is that we have a task called hull construction and it has 30 odd sub tasks which we wanted to use as a master or template for all vessels we build. the issue is we have not found a way to use this task in another project without them being linked which is what we do not want.

thanks

Chris

4

@chris39, When you Duplicate the task, uncheck the Projects checkbox:

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Then the task and all its subtasks will be stripped of their project memberships in the new copy.

Larry

2 Likes
5

Hi Larry

I owe you one mate. Quick question what does it do when you un-click parent task

thanks

chris

1 Like
6

@chris39,

I’ll consider us even!

Good question, and I’m not sure this dialog is documented in the Asana Guide (that I could find) (cc/@Rebecca_McGrath). A quick test confirmed that checking Parent task when Duplicating a subtask will cause a copy of the entire hierarchy of all parent tasks (one or more) of this subtask. Unchecking it will just create a duplicate of the subtask without its parents. If the task is a top-level task it’s irrelevant.

@Rebecca_McGrath, Do I have all that correct? If so:

  1. It would be better to label the checkbox Parent task(s)
  2. It would be better to disable or remove this checkbox from the dialog if the selected task to Duplicate has no parents.

Thanks,

Larry

7

Hi @chris39, great question! :slight_smile:

Thanks for jumping in here @lpb! After testing this on my end, it looks like you have all that correct :+1:t2:. I also agree with your feedback so I’ve gone ahead and escalated this to our Product team. I’ll come back to this thread if I have any updates :slight_smile:

1 Like
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