Copy multiple tasks

how do i copy multiple tasks at once including sub tasks?

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Hi @Stuart_Lisk

To copy multiple tasks, you select the first one by clicking on its title, holding down shift and selecting the last one. Or you can select non-consecutive tasks by holding down Ctrl.

The only way that I know of to copy subtasks is to add them to the project, which makes them appear outside of the parent task, or to drag them out manually, copy all of the tasks at once, then drag them back in again.

This only really applies if you’re copying tasks within the same project. If you want to copy tasks to another project, it’s much better and easier to multi-home them by adding them to more than one project.

Hope that helps.

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Hi @Stuart_Lisk! @Mark_Hudson is completely right there! Here is a little more info on multi-selecting (Task actions: create, move, duplicate, and more | Product guide • Asana Product Guide) and copying (Task actions: create, move, duplicate, and more | Product guide • Asana Product Guide) tasks! Let us know if there is anything else we can help with!

@Marie @Mark_Hudson I was able to select multiple tasks but do not see where I can select copy. How do you copy them once they are selected?

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Hi @Chris_Nordman

To copy, you just use the usual keyboard shortcut - Ctrl/Command + C.

:+1:

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Ha! Overthought this one, didn’t I? Thanks! This should be the last piece I need to get this going.

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This isn’t working for me. Nothing shows up when I paste the tasks.

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Hope you found a solution Christne but if not, it works if you use ctrl+c to copy then click to open a new task in the task list view to write and use keyboard shortcut ctrl+v it then pastes in all of the tasks you selected :slight_smile: It took me a while to work this out too!

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Hi Jennifer-

I can get the tasks to paste within the project where they already live, but not into a different project. So I’m having to copy, paste, select & drag to the new project. It seems like copy and paste should work across projects.

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Thank you posting this question and also for the helpful replies. My question with this is, when I copy the tasks, it removes my formatting. For example, once I copied the tasks, and pasted them into new task, it became four different tasks, instead of one with bullets as I intitially had them. Is there a way to turn off that formatting feature?

@Marie Thank you for your answer. When I select multiple tasks, the “copy tasks” option is not there. How can I copy multiple tasks and keep the same information - assignees, due dates, subtasks, and etc?

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I am really disappointed about Asana i have pro plan but many simple things like bulk copy of tasks can be done

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many repetitive work need to be done i already created this tasks in other project why i can not copy them in bulk to another ???

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I agree Alona! Was glad to find out that you can copy paste tasks, but hardly anything carries over to the new task. Struggling to find a solution for what I would have thought would be a breeze in Asana - I have a list of template tasks that contain information in the description, tags, notes. It’s currently about 40 tasks but the number is growing. Each week I want to duplicate the templates and then add in some extra info as a comment, assign the new tasks and add a due date. With no bulk duplicate option this has to be done manually for every single task.
More options on bulk edit would be handy too. I have tried making the templates list it’s own project, and duplicating the project, then moving the duplicates to the active project, but I’m not too keen on creating a whole new project duplicate every week or more when I have to do this.

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@fiona4 Have you checked out my recently released Sendana Add. It is very powerful and flexible.
Sendana Tools-Sendana Add- A Novel Way to Add and/or Transfer Projects and Tasks In Mass - #9 by James_Carl The only thing I would caution you is that it is limited to one level of subtasks currently. I am evaluating the extra work and process time because a little survey I did showed very few people go beyond one level of subtasks. @Alona_M I believe this would solve your previous post of some time ago also.

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Yes but currently you can’t copy multiple tasks that will also include the subs-tasks attached to them, I think that is what we would like to happen.

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Is there a way to copy multiple tasks as of now and have them retain the descriptions? I see that you can copy them once to a different project, but only once in that project. It seems like there should be more progress on this feature.

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This is an issue for us as well. If you can do all these other actions in the bulk task feature, you should be able to duplicate and keep your information. Otherwise, it makes it clunky and tedious, where it is supposed to ease and streamline. You can duplicate an individual task, so why not bulk? The Copy/Paste option does not carry over all the custom fields or description, so it isn’t a true fix. This keeps coming up as we need to duplicate long lists of tasks that we already took the time polishing once. It leads to an increased administrative burden on our project managers. Is there something in the works after they redid the bulk actions to duplicate tasks, with all the options of duplicating an individual task?

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@Marie I’d like to add my voice to this as well. Not sure why this is still not a standard feature for Asana already. It seems like one of the most basic and popular features that users would need. Any advice would be greatly apprecaited.

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Upvote!

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