🎁 Things you did not know about CSV export and custom fields

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1

The CSV importer/exporter is a powerful feature, but it does not always play well alongside custom fields. Here are a few things I learned.

:one: Colors are lost. There is no way to export the color of custom fields options, or re-import them.

:two: When importing, if a custom field is created, the order of the options is the one given by the file. You can’t decide « High » goes at the top.

:three: And the options available in a custom field are the ones having actual values in the file. If there were no tasks with « Medium » priority in the CSV, you won’t have it either when you import again.

:four: You won’t be able to map a custom field to a column when importing if there is the slightest discrepancy in options (e.g. your column has an option the field does not have).

:five: In some cases, yet to be understood by me, the importer won’t allow matching a column to a custom field and will default to a text field.

Anything I missed?
Thanks @LEGGO for helping with this piece.

:fr: Version Française

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2

To Add:
The CSV importer does not follow the process outlined in the 2018 article.

3

I am not sure the Asana team updates old posts on the blog


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Copy. My observation is that the current CSV import I utilized today lacks every option mentioned in the 2018 post–as if the feature set was distilled to the minimum.

5

A powerful feature with some major limitations, with the most important one being that it is LIMITED to 2000 items. There was no way around this for our 2100+ item project.

As it happens, we are happy about this limitation because otherwise we wouldn’t have found https://bridge24.com/ as our alternative. It allowed us functionality that we never imagined when we were using the Asana export.

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8

Hello,

I am new to Asana and will appreciate your help. I created a form in my project, I created custom fields for each question following this Export data from a form only - #2 by Bastien_Siebman and then I tried exporting the project doing this Forms Export. Before I created the custom fields, I was able to export to CSV, the form information was not there, so that is why I started looking on why it could be, and I created the custom fields. After doing that, now the form custom fields and answers from the forms submission are showing at the list section of the project, but when I tried exporting it to CSV, the actual file that is generated and saved in my laptop is an all files file type, not CSV. When opening it using excel, the formatting is not easy to manipulate and it requires work. What can I do to have it exporting in CSV? I am thinking I set up the custom fields incorrectly.

Thanks for your help

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When you open the CSV file with Excel, do you see a bunch of content that looks like a CSV but was not properly put into columns?

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Hey Bastien, I have this issue. I tried to export several CSVs from different projects but when I open it in excel it has a lot of info including the content of the tasks, but not split in columns, instead, it is an endless sequence of lines with data that is not possible to convert with “text to columns”. I was not able to sort this neither find a solution for it here in the forums. Do you know what might be causing it and what should be the path to the solution? Thank you! Best,

1 Like
11

Your Excel probably doesn’t use the right separator. Check if the file uses coma or semi-colon, and import the file accordingly. Let me know if you need guidance.

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Hi Bastien,
I do have the same issue as Stocco does. I am having users fill out an Asana form and connect the inputs to custom fields. This works perfectly fine in Asana itself and I do see all custom fields populated. However, when opening the csv trying to convert with “text to columns” the custom fields remain empty. I have tried all sorts of separators but do not get the result I am looking for. Do you have an idea for what else I could try or any subs-steps I’m missing?
Many thanks in advance,
Paula

13

Can you share with me in private your CSV file so I can have a look?

14

Hi! Where you able to fix this issue? I am having the same one.

Thanks!

15

There is nothing to be “fixed”, this is simply an alternate format you need to open using Excel correctly.

Here are the steps:

  1. Open a blank Excel document
  2. Click on the “Data” tab then on the “Get Data (Power Query)” button
  3. Select the “Text/CSV” button and import the CSV file
  4. At the next step, make sure to select “Comma” as separator type
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16

From what I have read, are we also able to export and files we have attached to a task?

17

Hi Mark, welcome to the forum :wave:

No, unfortunately that’s not possible.

18

Thank you Richard

1 Like
19

I’m having the same issues as everyone else. When I export to Excel all of the information is in one column “notes” and it is not separated out. And then I have to copy and paste everything into separate columns anyways and it’s a total time suck. I tried the open a blank doc, select text/csv and import and select comma as separator and the info is still in one column under notes. Help, what am I missing? And why is this so hard?