Search and replace text

English Forum Use Cases
1

A very appealing part of Asana’s design is its similarity to simple text editors. It would be nice if there were a search-and-replace feature.

The way we start new projects at our company (context: we manufacture computer peripherals) is by copying a template project.

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Um… We’re based in Taiwan; please ignore the Chinese text. The first thing that happens with this newly copied project is TEMPMODELNUM is replaced by whatever the new project’s model number is. We need to do this because most projects have the same structure, and without the model number in each task, Asana’s powerful search would be a bit pointless in this scenario. It’s not a big deal to just double-click and Command+V 50+ times each time a new project kicks off, but it is somewhat unpleasant.

It would be great if I could:

  1. Search and replace all task/subtask titles within a project
  2. Search and replace all task/subtask descriptions within a project
  3. Search and replace custom fields of all tasks/subtasks within a project (including dropdown items, but obviously only with other menu items)

I realize this probably isn’t a big priority for most people, but it would be nice to see this on Asana’s roadmap, if only so at some distant point down the road a lonely, heartbroken engineer can pick it up as a pain coping mechanism.

14 Likes
2

Great suggestion @gtang. We’ll capture this and pass it along to the team.

What mechanism do you use for this today? Do you search and then manually fill in the model number for each task?

3

Hi Katie! Yes, I currently do it manually.
Hopefully the upcoming “pre-made templates” feature can allow some basic variables or something.

4

Ah, I just realized I probably posted this in the wrong place…
“Community Suggestions” = Suggestion for this community forum ≄ Suggestions from this community re: Asana.

Is that correct?

5

Hey gtang… and anyone out there that might benefit from looking this up like I just did. I know this is 2 years old but Asana allows you to easily import tasks. You could just export the tasks to excel or your favorite editor. Change all, then import back in. Little work around. I guess then you would wonder why you used templates in the first place. Hope this is a help for someone.

1 Like
6

I agree, search and replace would be awesome!

2 Likes
8

Hey! Thanks for posting this suggestion. I’m trying to do this but when I go to import the importer doesn’t have a drop down for Task ID, which would seem essential if you’re trying to do a mass update rather than create new tasks. Have you been successful in doing a mass update?

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Thanks!

9

We use templates to manage creation of video courses. Each time I create a new project, I have to manually cut/paste many times to replace our placeholder text [Course Title] with the actual title, similar to the OP’s workflow. Find and replace would be great, or even better, some way to set variables in templates so I could, for example, enter the actual course title in a field, and have it automatically populate any area in the template that says [Course Title.] Thanks!

2 Likes
10

Bumping up this request as I believe it would be beneficial to many

Fingers crossed! :crossed_fingers:t4:

1 Like
11

Hello, I needed to do a similar thing, and I managed to do it by writing a script.

I used the following tools, but you can use any major programming languages you know, and the personal access token can be directly written in the code (“hard-coded”):

# coding=utf-8

import asana
import os

client = asana.Client.access_token(os.environ['ASANA_ACCESS_TOKEN'])
tasks = client.projects.tasks('11111111') # Add your project GID

old_text = 'Old text'
new_text = 'New text'

for task in tasks:
    if old_text in task['name']:
        client.tasks.update(task['gid'], {'name': task['name'].replace(old_text, new_text)})

I hope this helps, and I also hope Asana implements it’s own feature to search and replace the text.

5 Likes
12

Hi @Katie! Would it be possible for you to provide an update as it pertains to this feature request? This is something I deal with daily… for example, I ran 16 templates within the last 24 hours and have had to manually rename hundreds upon hundreds of tasks that either a variable text field or a bulk edit feature would resolve. I would truly :heart: :heart: :heart: this feature! Thanks for your insights in advance!

5 Likes
13

Just to underline the Find and Replace question - a fairly new Asana users trying to set up templates and have hit the same issue - renaming the client name fields. Find and replace would be excellent

14

Hi guys, I don’t know if this helps, but I found a Chrome extension, which works without a problem …

15

Sorry Guys it didn´t work, and I can’t delete my first reply.

16

I agree this would be incredibly helpful. I have to cut and paste the name of our install facility into every task of a templated project and some of them have 80 tasks. It’s very time consuming.

17

Adding find and replace would easily save me several hours per week. I’m a content production manager, and our templated projects have many tasks which include the project name. Currently I have to manually copy/paste every one.

18

I just tried the Find & Replace plugin you mentioned and it worked to rename a bunch of tasks in a project. Thanks! I’m using Chrome on a Mac.

1 Like
19

This feature would be AMAZING. Please Asana, make it happen! It looks like it’s been requested for over four years now, so maybe you’re about to publish it? Fingers crossed!

1 Like
20

when you refresh the page the text you replaced will revert back, right? I used the same extension and it did this. So it was changing the text you saw on the web page, but not the actual embedded text in the project.

1 Like
21

I found the same to be true and it is highly frustrating.