Importing Parent Tasks (with Subtasks) from Excel Spreadsheet

@Maimoona_Block

Am I correct that there is not a way as of yet to import Parent tasks with subtasks from an Excel spreadsheet? If there is a way, are there currently any instructional resources on how?

Thanks in advance!

Hi @David_Gusaas you are correct, currently there is not a way to import subtasks from an excel sheet into Asana, just the parent tasks. Would you be open to chatting about your use case and how your subtasks are formatted in the spreadsheet?

2 Likes

@Maimoona_Block I would be open to chatting about it, though I’m afraid I’m largely at a loss of how to format the spreadsheet in the first place. Essentially I just need to transfer a checklist from Evernote -->Excel Spreadsheet–>Asana.

Ah I see. I did have someone ask about importing subtasks but they were exporting from Asana then back into Asana. As I said unfortunately there isn’t a way to import subtasks : ( You could copy and paste from Excel to subtasks for now or explore Zapier Asana Integrations | Connect Your Apps with Zapier

We are definitely taking the feedback on subtasks very seriously when we look at the product roadmap.

I’ve got a use case where I need to be able to load parent tasks with many subtasks under them. I don’t know how to format for import, but we have a large project coming up with lots of parent and child tasks that we need to get into Asana, and copy/pasting 100+ tasks isn’t going to be feasible time-wise.

3 Likes

HI, @Maimoona_Block.

We are also looking for a possibility to import subtasks.
My team are exploring how to use Asana to have better control of our product launches

Every new product is a task and have the same set of subtaskt to ensure that everything about the product is OK. Pictures,specs,prices etc. We use subtasks to assign different tasks to different people.

Now we have approx 100 new products that we where hoping to import as tasks, with subtasks.

Looking forward to hear your opinions on this.

BR

Espen T

1 Like

Hi @Espen_Thomas_Nordby would it work to import each product as a project with tasks, or would you still need subtasks? Is this a one time import and or will you be importing from a CSV on a regular basis?

An alternative is to use a pipeline setup. Then have each product as it’s own task. Move the product through the pipeline for each step that’s needed. Unfortunately that makes it a linear process and would be harder to have multiple steps being worked on at the same time.

Hi @Maimoona_Block , I saw the “project” solution, but i think it would be a bit hard and not easy to manage hundreds of projects?
I think it would be a import on regular bases, not 100+ but maybe aprox ±50 new product from new suppliers etc.

@Geoff_Manning: Thanks for the heads up on pipeline, I personally like the “pipeline” view, but we are many people working in different stages all the time.

Hi @Espen_Thomas_Nordby thank you-good to know that you would need to import on a regular basis and that the project solution won’t fit your needs. We are scoping the ability to add subtasks so this feedback is very helpful!

@Maimoona_Block What would be really great is if Asana would re-consider a topic mentioned many times, ie having new subtasks default to the Project of the Parent Task. A world of reporting would open up without the idea of orphan subtasks (No Project). I am fully aware that I am talking export and this topic is import but I assume if you add subtasks you will face the issue of assigning them to a Project & Parent task unless you just import to a Parent. Thanks for your consideration

4 Likes

The ability to import subtasks would be AMAZING!!! I’ve estimated that my team spends roughly 400 hours annually configuring layered templates. I could see this feature making our process 75% more efficient!!! :pray: :pray: :pray:

4 Likes

I, too, need subtasks to be imprtable. I import about 150 tasks that are events and each event has many subtasks.

3 Likes

Is there a timeline on this feature as the CSV imports are not useful to our team without being able to import sub tasks

4 Likes

@Vega_Sims, You might ask @Bastien_Siebman if he has that capability in Templana as I don’t know. Maybe he could be of some assistance.

Indeed Templana allows the creation of templates using subtasks if needed cc @Vega_Sims thanks @James_Carl

Have there been any updates to this?

We are hoping to create a project for client Required Minimum Distributions and this will need to be imported on an annual basis. It would be very cumbersome to go in and manually create subtasks under each parent task for each of the clients affected.

Have their been any updates to this? I am trying to import Excel .csv file with homework tasks by week for a class. The subtasks would be the homework assignments in each week:

@David_Gusaas, @Kate_S (welcome), and others,

This feature (ability to import subtasks) was added a while ago and is explained here:

Thanks,

Larry