Issue with Sections

What is going on with Sections with the new update? I now have Section headers I can’t delete once all tasks are completed. And like it was stated above, Sections no longer are able to contain descriptions, due dates, assignees, etc.

Hi @Jeremy_R and welcome to the Forum,

As it stands, you still need to empty columns before you can delete them. So you can either delete all tasks under this column or move them somewhere else. You should then be able to delete your Section.

The good news is that today we’ve started rolling out an update allowing you to delete Sections even if they contain tasks. This new feature is currently available to 20% of our users and will be able to everyone within the next couple of days.

Hope this helps, but please let me know if you have any follow-up questions!

How do I delete sections? I completed all of the tasks under a section heading and am now prevented from deleting it because I have to clear all of the completed AND incomplete tasks. I have to delete all the completed tasks??

I really dislike this new view and wish I could revert. Projects–which I use to plan and scan–are almost totally unusable to me now. Planning is time-consuming and scanning is virtually impossible.

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Hi @Ellen_Duffer and sorry for the trouble here! I’ve merged this your post with this other thread that covers the same question you have. Please have a look at this reply that should answer your question!

A question then for the update that’s forthcoming: when I delete the sections that contain tasks, is it going to delete the completed tasks (and/or incomplete tasks) that fall under those sections? I’m hoping the answer is no.

Preservation of data is important; I’m not sure why anyone would willingly delete all their completed tasks just so they could delete a section header. What a bizarre feature to roll out to people.

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Thanks for the follow-up @Ellen_Duffer

This was actually a request that came from the Community :slight_smile: and yes, I can confirm that tasks nested within a Section you’re deleting will get deleted too. Sounds like you’re more looking to “Archive” a Section (keep the data, but remove it from your current view), am I correct? If so, I’d highly encourage you ro add your vote to Archive a Section in a Project

Hope this helps!

Right, I do want archiving–something that was possible before (I could check sections off as “complete”) but has now been taken away. So now my only alternative is to delete. I can either delete EVERYTHING within a section or keep a defunct section header in the already newly cluttered list view in order to preserve history.

I’ll vote but I truly don’t understand why this update stripped Asana of functionality. The more I use it the more I find that’s been disrupted.

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Sections will soon be collapsable and you will be able to move them around with all of their child tasks, so one way to work around this would to drag all “Completed” Sections at the bottom of you Project so they take minimum space but are still accessible when you need them.

I’ve already done that. That’s not a solution–it just adds to the chaotic mess that is the new list view. I know you’re the messenger and I don’t envy your role right now but if that’s the advice that you’re having to give–to clutter up a project with stuff you need to save because there’s nowhere else to put it when a week ago I didn’t have to do this–there’s a problem.

46%20PM

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I’m always happy to help @Ellen_Duffer, I know the solution I’m offering you here is not ideal, but I hope it can help until we bring up a solution allowing you to archive Sections. If there is anything else I can help in the meantime, please let me know!

I agree. This renders Asana much less useful and now very cumbersome for us. I think Sections should be able to be “completed” as they were before without having to delete all tasks below them. At the least, they should auto-hide if all tasks inside of them are completed. (When viewing only incomplete tasks)

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Seems that what if you need to assign sections to someone, due dates and descriptions what you might fin useful is making that a task, and what you normally used as tasks would be subtasks of that new master task

New sections broke a lot of features just to be able to switch between column and list
Personally I don’t think it was worth it and it’s making me reasses other options to migrate my project management

A second the idea of auto-hide. I’ve worked with other PM software and that is how they dealt with this issue. They also had the option to pin sections you wanted to remain visible even when all tasks in them were completed.

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Related issues with sections - we had template projects with descriptions in the section headers. These have populated as new tasks below the section header, and I’m glad that data isn’t lost.

But because descriptions and subtasks are no longer available for section headers, I have to have extra “dead” tasks below the section headers with links, information, and important data. I used to have this data directly connected to the section it applied to, but I can’t anymore. Adding in a description field for the section header would be very helpful.

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