My assumption for “Archive” is that the task would no longer show up in my list of things to do (My Tasks). Archived projects should no longer show up in search or in tasks as the project is not active, but archived.
As an example, I work with clients on a monthly basis. We plan tasks for next month, two months out, three months out, etc. If a client cancels after the first month I want to archive their project so it doesn’t show that it needs to be done.
Deleting the project isn’t an option because if the client returns we want to start where we left off and Unarchive the project.
I’m chiming in to agree with all of the above. I’m not sure what good “archive” does if it’s like the project never left. I’m being forced to officially delete one, as this is not acceptable - some of these tasks are multi-project, and cannot be un-assigned with due date removed.
Yup. Found this thread to figure out why in the world Archiving a Task doesn’t unclutter my inbox. Thanks for the tip on batch un-assigning, although this means I have to lose the who-will-do-what information (and work time spent deciding and assigning that).
My team would benefit from an update that removes tasks in an Archived Project from assigned users’ inboxes. We plan out a project, and when it has to be put on hold for an indeterminate amount of time, it’s still there spamming up the inboxes. What is the other purpose of an archive, I wonder?
Adding my voice to this one too. I came here via a search because I needed archived projects to stop showing up in my tasks. It’s confusing, cluttering and misleading. I archive projects when they go dormant from my clients (e.g. the client moves me to other things) but a lot will get ressurrected again. Need them not to show in my tasks and be clearly marked “archive” when searching.
Another vote from me. I am shocked to find out how little archiving does.
I was hoping that Archiving would give me a way to exclude Template Project activities from people’s Inbox, but no such luck.
Why is it almost three years now and there isn’t even the beginnings of progress towards making “archived” projects disappear unless searched for specifically? Moving tasks to “later” is a hack. Unassigning people is a hack. Doing anything to remove tasks from archived projects (or search results) other than “archiving the project” is hack.
I see that one of the workarounds here is to bulk-select and unassigned Tasks before archiving the Project. I don’t see how to do that if the Tasks are all assigned to different people? When I bulk select several Tasks assigned to different people, the ‘Assign’ field is empty by default, so how do I unassign? I would assign all of the Tasks to one person, but I don’t see how to set the bulk selected Tasks to ‘nobody’, since there is no ‘unassign’ option?
The trick is to assign them all to you first. Then you’ll see the small “x” appear on the Assignee field and you can click it to unassign all. I’m not sure why the “x” is not there even with the mixed assignments.
Similarly for due dates, to remove due dates for a bunch of tasks that are currently different dates, first set them all to the same date in order to see the “x”.
I think some of the recommended workarounds don’t fulfill the function of an archive very well: when I archive it I want to see it as it was. If I’m going to unassign people from tasks I lose that record of what was assigned to whom, when. And, as others have mentioned, it would force us to re-assign everything if an on-hold project gets going again.
I agree. I have set up projects for events that have now been postponed to an unknown date due to COVID. Tasks were assigned to different team members and I neither want to mark them as complete nor unassign them.
Please change the functionality of archiving so that it unclutters the project list and task lists.
FWIW had a laugh-out-loud moment when the unhide archived tasks needed a google search/forum post to find out how to undo and still no solution! - made me decide Asana wasn’t for me.
Please respond to this, Asana. This is still an issue for many of us. If a project is archived, there is no need to interact with those tasks, and those tasks should not show up in any normal views including My Tasks and Tasks I Have Assigned to Others.
Removing assignees, or otherwise modifying those tasks, destroys data integrity. “Archive” essentially means “hide but keep”, and that’s how Asana should be treating those projects and tasks.
totally bump these multiple threads, …camehere for a fix (not a work around) and stayed for the hate, so I suggest, make archive an archive, or change the term “archive” to " over-promising on a feature to annoy people with a return of the repressed"
I would also like to see the archive function as an actual archive. Seeing all the archived tasks is cluttering my tasks and removing all the assignee’s is undesirable for archival purposes.
I would like to add my vote in agreement with all of the comments above.
Archiving a project should remove all incomplete tasks, project updates, messages to inboxes, etc. We need our archived projects to maintain all of the data from the project (such as which team member the task was assigned to, if it was completed or not, original due dates, etc.) without it cluttering our task lists and inboxes. PLEASE correct this!
Would like to bump this thread and add my support here. By any logical standard, archiving a project = archiving all tasks in that project. The clutter in “My Tasks” is not acceptable and the manual workarounds are a manual task that negatively affects productivity – the opposite of why I’m here!