Hi -
The project rules are terrific - really save a lot of time.
I have created a Project “task list,” for one off tasks
I have no need to retain those tasks when completed
Would it be possible to add a “Delete Task” Action so those tasks would be automatically deleted when marked complete ?
Is there a work-around for this.
This one rule would be a significant time saver.
Thanks!
Hi @DMS and thanks for sharing your feedback 
That is not possible at the moment I’m afraid, you could possibly look into using Rules to move these tasks to another project you would entirely dedicate to “Archived/Deleted tasks” but that’s only a workaround and wouldn’t actually delete these tasks.
You might also be interested in upvoting this other thread Removal Action When Using Rules which is in some way similar to your request and on my end, I’ll make sure to keep you posted as soon as I have an update!
Very good suggestion, I was myself hoping to set up an “archive column” that would delete items upon their being dropped there (in additiong to being sent to the archive project I’ve set up)
Please give us an option to delete completed tasks after an adjustable time period, say 8 days or 6 months or 12 months.
Apparently the dev team has decided that we should never delete tasks. While that might be fine for one-off projects, it’s a nightmare for ongoing processes like editorial organization. We just had to manually delete more than 2.000 completed tasks that built up within just a couple of months.
We plan to use this editorial project for years. How is this going to work, if we can’t automatically delete completed tasks? Ending up with hundreds of thousands of completed tasks in a project? Really? And no, we can’t just delete the project from time to time, because it’s an ongoing process with hundreds of active tasks.
What’s worse, all those completed tasks slow down and clog up the search results with irrelevant, long finished tasks. It’s also not helpful when you have repeating tasks with the same title. Searching for it brings up dozens of completed tasks, making it much harder to find what you’re looking for. Which is, in 99% of cases, uncompleted tasks.
Some desperate users resort to workarounds like creating an “archive” project and rules to move completed tasks to this project. This would work, if the tasks would actually be “moved” – so far there is only the possibility to add a task to a project, meaning it will still hang around in the original project. So you still have to manually delete those tasks from time to time.
Seriously, guys? Don’t you think users should be able decide how to deal with completed tasks for themselves instead of your team deciding to force some highfalutin “never delete anything” philosophy on everybody?
Hi @Thilo_Roscheisen, thanks for reaching out and sharing your feedback with us!
As it stands, it’s currently not possible to delete completed tasks automatically. We already have a similar request for this feature so I’ve gone ahead and merged your post with Rule action to delete a task to centralize feedback. To be honest with you we don’t have immediate plans to launch this feature but I’ll keep you posted once I have any news!
Thilo, you CAN make it so those older tasks no longer appear in your current project. Once you have added them (which Asana calls multi-homing them) to the archive project, you can dehome them from the current project and they will be entirely gone from there. This can be a bulk move done up to 50 tasks at a time.
I don’t love this solution, but it’s what we have at the moment.
Thank you, Stephanie. To me it seems easier to just delete all those tasks from time to time from the archive project. At least there’s no arbitrary 50 task limit. All these weird limitations are really puzzling and very frustrating to me…
Thilo
Yes, indeed. Asana seems to require more, and more elaborate, workarounds than I have ever had to use anywhere. AND…the occasional changes Asana makes tend to break existing workarounds. It becomes a challenge to train people in the org who may not spend their whole day in Asana.
this update is really needed also to make sure that we are in complient with GDPR-regulation
I created a new project to streamline the process of onboarding/offboarding/account changes for employees. I then made a rule that creates new subtasks based on selecting a multi-select custom field (New HIre, Termination, or Change). How do I make it so if they un-select and option such as new hire, it will delete the subtasks that were automatically created?
Hello @Jon_Alden welcome to the Asana Community Forum 
Deleting tasks or subtasks via rule is not possible yet.
I recommend upvoting here Rule action to delete a task and here Rule action to delete a task
I hope that you develop this solution very soon!
Hey @Andrea_Mayer ,
This entire discussion is already years ago and still no such feature has been added. I don’t understand how this can be so difficult to implement? It is certainly needed and for us right now one of the main criteria of staying with Asana or moving to a different CRM.
Is there any news here?
Welcome to the Asana Community Forum👋
Just to clarify I do not work for Asana I am only an ambassador/ forum leader.
Since Asana does not have a public roadmap I am unable to tell if and when this might be implemented.
However I can say that Asana is always monitoring all feedback request threads and launching new features regularly. This also includes feature releases of product feedback requests with a lot of votes.
See the latest releases here:
Ad Hoc
Hi @Emily_Roman I am having this same issue. This was 3 years ago. Has this issue been addressed. IT would be soo helpful for our team if we could automatically delete tasks with a rule or any other way. Please let me know, thanks!
After 4 years if planning, “Completed Tasks” still show up.
If something is completed, we dont need it listed in our CURRENT task list.
It needs to b autoarchived into a folder in that project titled “completed tasks”
Truly astonishing that they haven’t added this incredibly basic functionality after 4 YEARS. I just moved my entire company to Asana and now I’m realizing the jumbled sh*theap of code that it must be built on to prevent them from adding these small, simple, elegant features. Really regretting the move and am looking for alternatives. Anyone recommend alternatives to Asana that doesn’t require you to work around the bizarre bugs and “features”?
Hi all, thank you for sending the requests
I think Asana prefers completing the tasks to deleting them, as many of you mentioned.
The history of what tasks existed and what decisions were made to deem them unnecessary, is valuable in itself.
@Thilo_Roscheisen
If you just want to offload projects, it’s now possible to move task to another project or remove task from the project:
@Rasmus_Slot_Nielsen
If you really want to delete the tasks, pressing the keyboard shortcut (Tab+Delete/Backspace) might be easier than triggering the rule (e.g. dragging the task(s) to a certain section).
You can achieve that by filtering the tasks and saving two/three views:
