Copy/Paste a draft list of tasks from Excel and/or Word into a Project

[#1]

Teams often want to brainstorm and begin to organize a list of tasks in something like Word and/or Excel. To avoid the cumbersome process of "uploading" the list into a project via a clunky kick-starter template, teams would like to easily copy the list of tasks from Word/Excel and paste them into a Project. Other programs they have used in the past have made this a common-practice approach. So, having a fast way to just copy and then paste a raw list of tasks into a project at any time would save time and decrease frustration/complaints.

[#2]

Hi - I just had a PM asking me about this again today. I'm amazed that there are not more votes for this idea!

[#3]

This would be FANTASTIC and would go a long way toward getting wider adoption of Workfront for us. So often I'm presented with outlines in Word from non-Workfront users that I could so easily turn into a task list if I could import or copy/paste it into my project.

[#4]

Yes! Who doesn't create task lists in Word/Excel/Notepad? Being able to get them into WF easier would save a LOT of time.

[#5]

This isn't exactly the same thing... but copy/pasting from EXCEL into updates would be great too.

Why can't they build off of the "xml"/Microsoft Project upload and be able to upload an excel file? Even if you can't copy/paste direclty into a task, being able to "read" the lines and field match the columns doesn't seem like a stretch if there is something already doing this? Maybe I'm missing something?

[#6]

Up-voted! This is a subset of a general question that has been asked many, many times over the years, and can probably be found in several versions around the Idea Exchange: when is the Workfront task list UI finally going to support standard Ctrl-ZXCV? We can't even cut-and-paste tasks from one Workfront project to another, let alone from another app. IMHO this simple yet oh-so-frustrating lack leads to a trickle-down roadblock to adoption. ~Jeff

[#7]

Thank you for the interesting idea. We would love to invest in building this feature but due to other priorities we won’t be able to work on this during upcoming 12 months. Because of that we will mark it Not Planned, but please continue voting for it if that is something that you are interested in.

Thank you!

Anna Asatryan,

Product Manager, Workfront

[#8]

Thanks for the feedback Anna. Obviously a bit disappointing that it is not planned within the next 12 months, when so many other modern SaaS apps already allow this functionality. This idea goes to the core of day-to-day usability of users who live in the system, so I wonder what else is on the plans that is more important?

[#9]

I am continually asked for this functionality & am disappointed that it is not currently being considered. We deal with multiple consultants, contractors, partners, etc.. .and if we could import and/or copy their Excel data, we would save time and make our teams much happier - it would also help with adoption. Now, we are forced to have someone re-enter data into Workfront & then our teams relay that they are not seeing value in our Workfront tool. (Note: Kick Start is not the answer)

[#10]

Agreed. Excel is so intuitive, unlike WorkFront, that being able to copy/paste from it should be a no brainer.

[#11]

Would a small tweak to this idea request get it accepted?

Take a list of strings

Task1

Task2

Task3

Task4

These are separated by a newline character. We'd like to be able to copy paste this list into workfront to make multiple tasks in one go. Very similar to how Trello handles it when someone copy-pastes a list of items see this video https://youtu.be/-4asIg7Aylg

It'd, of course, be nice to be able to include dates and other information here, but just the task names solve a good percentage of the problem here.