Hello, I’ve been using Asana for personal task and project management for over 10 years at this point. At the time, it was the best tool for the job I could find. The vast ecosystem of integrations, (like a native Windows Phone app!) were astonishing. Both the personal projects space and dedicated workspaces served me well, but it’s time to move on. Especially in light of the imminent shutdown of personal project spaces.
At this point it’s clear that the way I’ve been using Asana is not the way it is meant to be used (or at least not anymore). And with each passing year I am more and more aware how constraining the Software-as-a-Service model can be for people like me. I really need to migrate to some local-first solution, like Obsidian or Emacs’ Org-mode.
But how do I do it? The CSV export functionality skips a ton of data and metadata. It does not preserve formatting, modification history (stories objects), link labels, and so on. And it only operates on a small sliver of the data in question at a time! But I can’t find any other data export functionality anywhere else. I would expect some kind of raw database or JSON dump (akin to Google takeout) to be located in the account settings, yet there’s nothing like that there.
Is a GDPR data access request my only option or have I missed something less heavy-handed?
Others may have additional input but here are my thoughts…
I don’t think you’re going to be able to do it at no cost (aside from maybe the GDPR option, I don’t know anything about that).
Two ways I can think of to get all of your data out:
Use a third-party backup tool, either on a free trial or subscribe for one month; there are a few of them but the one @Bastien_Siebman and I have worked with is ProBackup which can export to Excel.
Upgrade your Asana to Enterprise+ for one month; the database dump you’re looking for is available in account settings but only at that subscription level (I know, please don’t shoot the messenger).
It could also be done via the Asana API but I’m guessing you’re not a developer and I don’t know of an existing script or program that does it via that mechanism.
Thank you for your reply. This is exactly the kind of information I’ve been looking for!
It’s good to know the functionality is there at least, even if it’s limited to Enterprise+ users. Though I doubt upgrading to it is a viable path, since that plan is only available by going through the sales team.
I’ll look into the backup tool you suggested. I am also aware of https://github.com/plswiderski/asanaexporter, which seems to offer most of what I need. But it isn’t capable of exporting the edit history, as far as I know.
Still, I am a developer. I’ll have to go through the API docs more thoroughly and see if the more niche parts of what I want are even possible for a third-party tool. (The last time I was trying to export the historical versions of a task’s description, I ended up sifting through the data that the official webapp fetches, which is not ideal to say the least.)
That URL doesn’t seem to work either. Yes, I checked without any extensions enabled (and in incognito mode). I am getting the same error message as before. I guess it must be some more elusive bug then.
I’m happy to help debug this, but for some reason I cannot even post a .png screenshot here. When trying to do so, Discourse gives this rather unhelpful error message:
Sorry, but your upload failed. Please try again.
OK
I doubt it’s a problem with the file, but I’ll test some other ones later.
Thanks for flagging @Piotr_Maslowski !
That’s flagged internally now, so the appropriate team can look into the issue. I’ll be in touch when I hear anything back.
