Search doesn't return results I expect

I imported about 100 tasks from a Word document by using Copy and then Paste. Each task was a single line that looks like:

Action Item: Do this one thing (Steve)
Action Item: Do this other thing (John)
Action Item: Do this other thing (Matt)

I want to use search to isolate all of Steve’s tasks, then John’s, then Matt’s so that I can do real task assignments via the Asana UI.

So, I tried advanced search like this:

But I cannot get it to work; it returns all of the tasks even though only about 20 of them have “(Matt)” in the title.

OK, so I have a new clue.

It appears as if Asana search is ignoring the parentheses on (Matt) and is matching on the “Matt” in the history.

Is there any way to restrict a search to the task title? Is there any way to escape the parens to make them included in the search?

I think you can’t restrict search to the title. I also found out that search does not work well with special characters (quotes, parenthesis, accents…).

Hi @Matt_Trifiro

Have you considered importing the tasks through a spreadsheet instead? You can import task titles but also assignees, so you could do all of the set-up in Excel, then whack it straight into a project.

More detail here: New: Import Spreadsheets and CSV Files to Asana Projects

Thanks Mark. Great idea. Total hack (Asana’s search should actually work), but this does the trick

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