Hi @Megan_Thomsen, welcome to the Asana Community Forum! Our team is aware of this issue and we’ll work to solve it. I’ve gone ahead and merge your post with the main thread to centralize feedback and we’ll keep you updated as soon as we have any news!
@Community_Managers, in Nov '20 Emily, confirmed the team will solve this problem. Could you ask if it can be prioritized higher?
We’d like to just turn off these two things currently being done when you make an existing task a subtask of another:
- Don’t unassign the subtask
- Don’t remove projects from the subtask.
Apparently it was agreed this behavior (at least the unassign part if not both) were undesirable so it would be nice to see it happen.
Thanks,
Larry
Hi @lpb, thanks for following up here. Unfortunately, as our Product team has confirmed that this is actually expected behaviour and not a bug, they are not working towards an immediate fix at the moment. They have, however, taken the feedback and will keep in in mind for future updates to subtasks.
I’ll let you know when I have any more updates 
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Hi @Rebecca_McGrath & @Emily_Roman
Just further to this the weird thing is that if I use Make a Task a SubTask of a Task that I am not the Assignee of it doesn’t drop the Assignee or the Project.
I noticed this again today when doing some clean up work in my Inbox for tasks assigned to others…
Regards
Jason.
FYI @lpb
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That behavior makes it quite obvious that Asana philosophy is that subtasks are just personal checklist for the main task assignee =)
@Bastien_Siebman, Jason’s example just above refutes that theory, doesn’t it? The parent task and subtask have different assignees which Asana let stand.
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they do let it slide, but they purposefully remove the assignee when converting to subtasks. My point was more a joke than a scientific fact ^^
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I’m adding another voice to the complaint. That it does this inconsistently (i.e., depending on whether the user is the assignee, or even depending on which view is open) makes it hard to believe that it’s expected behavior. Regardless, it’s terrible functionality and has led to many, many tasks being lost.
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Wow, I’m surprised I’ve never run into this before, but it’s incredibly annoying and a bit scary because it IS inconsistent. I believe I understand the logic, but it’s kind of scary to think how many tasks I may have accidentally just unassigned.
Use case:
We’re moving tasks from a Product Launch task into a release candidate subtask that is assigned to the developer. When I move them to the subtask, there is still work to be done, and I DEFINITELY don’t want those unassigned, especially this close to a release date. Losing track of those is less than ideal.
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For me as well it’s hard to believe that this is an expected behavior. This makes it easy to miss tasks, because they were unassigned by mistake. What is the big value of automatically un-assigning them when adding them as a subtask?
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How is this still happening?!
It creates so much extra work.
I just noticed something even weirder: If you make a task into a subtask by drag and drop it doesn’t remove the assignee.
But if you use the “Advanced options” menu it removes the assignee.
This would be a great work-around… except that drag & drop is only available if the two tasks in question are already in the same project.
I am having trouble understanding as well. But now that I know this behavior exists, every time I use the menu I check of the assignee was removed.
Hi,
I have a task on a list project. When I click add as subtask, and add it as a subtask, the project is removed. Is this how it’s supposed to work? This seems wrong.
Thank you!
Briefly describe (1-2 sentences) the Bug you’re experiencing:
When I make a task a subtask of another, it clears any projects the task was originally associated with.
Steps to reproduce:
- Create a task (“Task A”) associated with a particular project
- Now edit that task (“Task A”) so it becomes a subtask of another task (“Task B”)
- That original task (“Task A”) has been removed all projects it was originally associated with
Browser version:
Applies to all browsers
Upload screenshots below:
N/A
Hi there,
Unfortunately I don’t think this a bug, but rather what they call “expected behavior.” When a task is demoted to a subtask it then behaves as if it’s only ever been a subtask. Since it’s nested inside the parent task (Task B) which is part of a project, the subtask will tag along with the parent task and still appear within that project, but it won’t carry the same weight and is no longer itself technically “part of the project.” If (Parent Task B) is not associated with all of the same projects (Parent Task A) once was, the subtask will no longer appear in any additional projects.
Subtasks are a bit tricky in that they are sort of quasi-tasks that have some privileges but not others. For instance they don’t appear in timeline or calendar views, they don’t trigger rules, they won’t appear in search results unless you specifically include subtasks, (among other limitations.)
If you happen to be a newer user I know this is super weird and confusing, and there are MANY forum topics about the behavior of Subtasks. We are all REALLY hoping they gain better visibility sometime in the near future. 
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Hi,
Let me give my experience on this subject.
First of all I’m glad I found this thread. I was wondering why my the project wasn’t showing up on subtasks, not only when I turn a task into a subtask but when I create a new subtasks. We use the My Tasks list, and seeing at a glance what project a task belongs to is huge for us. I’m glad that the workaround exists that we can add associate a subtask with a project, but it would be much better for us to just have it automatically assigned.
Our team uses Asana heavily to systemize and we have tons of project templates. We create a lot of new projects from templates. In the resources I’ve looked at, I can’t assign a subtask in a template to that project. If that is possible I’d love to know how. If not, I’d suggest adding it because it would be SO helpful for systemization.
If this is in the wrong section please let me know,
Thank you!
True, I just tested again. However the thread is really not about this topic but instead about the fact that transforming a task into a subtask removes the assignee and project.
You might want to consider posting on Project templates V2: what we gain, what we lose instead!
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Steps to reproduce:
- Add a task named Task 1 as a task in Project A.
- Add a task named Task 2 as a task in Project B.
- In the detail pane for Task 1, select *Convert to Subtask Select Task 2 from the dropdown list.
desired behavior:
That Task 1 becomes a subtask of Task 2, without joining that project, but it also retains its association with Project A.
This solves the workload and portfolio issues because you can easily choose to put or not put both projects in the portfolio and get the full picture of the workload.