[Status: Not planned] Convert a Task into a Project

Hi Phillip, welcome to the Community :) Thanks for sharing this idea here! Something I wanted to mention, in case it helps other users, is that if you have several tasks and want all of them (except one) to be part of a new Project, you can:

1. Create a new Project in the Folder Tree. This Project will replace the task you want to convert.
2. Copy information from the task to the newly created Project.
3. With the help of Mass Editing, move all of the other tasks to the new Project:

That's great too, but I'd like to be able to perform a "mind dump" of sorts to list out all of the possible things we could be working on from a high level. Some of these items would remain tasks, but others should really be projects. Some ideas simply grow from a small thing into a much larger thing, requiring project status. 

And perhaps there is more to do when sending an email to wrike@wrike.com, but what I've experienced so far is that when I use this feature, it creates a task. I get email requests that include a good overview of a "project" so I want to simply forward that email to Wrike to start getting things setup. But when it only gives me the option of being a task, it becomes much less useful to me.

Maybe I should adopt a different workflow, but this is how my brain works right now! ;-)

Phillip, thanks for the additional info, I can see how this would be useful for the scenario you've described!

I'm in Phillip's situation too. I'd love to turn the content I'm emailed into a project to include all that text and any attachments that a requester has sent.  Just wanted to add a 2nd on this one :)

It would be great to be able to do the conversion from task to project so I also wanted to support the idea

I'm running into this same issue. Would love to turn a task into a project.

I also follow similar methodology as Phillip.  Being about to change a task to a project is a high priority for me.  If you can't then next priority would be to be able to duplicate a set of tasks to a task.  You can do this with duplicating tasks to a folder but you can't to a task.

Hi everyone, thanks for adding your votes to this request! @Brian, that's really useful to know. Just something I wanted to clarify: when mentioning task duplication, do you mean the ability to turn a set of tasks into one task? I wanted to let you know that in case you want to duplicate a single task and make another task out of it, this is possible by right clicking on the task in List View and selecting "Duplicate". Let me know if that's not what you meant, or if you have any other questions about this, I'll be happy to continue the discussion!

What I meant was I would like the ability to duplicate multiple tasks from one project or  Task to another Task.   I can't duplicate a whole project to a task, I can only duplicate a whole project to another project.  

For example I have a couple of templates with standard tasks, milestones and dependancies.  When I have a new project I can select my template project and duplicate the whole project (all the tasks / subtasks) to the new project.  I can assign a pre-fix name (I really like this feature)  and duplicate it right to the target project.  I can't do the same with tasks.  I can only duplicate one task at a time, in the same project (I can't duplicate it to another project).  It would be very useful to be able to select multiple task then duplicate them to a project or task.

Hi Brian, thanks for clarifying! I understand now how this functionality would be helpful for you, and I think that some other users would also be interested in seeing this. It would be great if you could add the multiple task duplication request as a separate post in the Product Feedback section, so we could keep track of upvotes for this idea specifically. :)

I would like the ability to turn projects into tasks. I'm a project manager for my team, and they got started with Wrike a year before I was hired, and  I'm trying to optimize it for how the team works.Things that should have been set up ask tasks (or even subtasks) were set up as projects, and this needlessly complicates things. I really don't want to have to redo everything from scratch, they have about 300-400 different publications and emails that are sent out, and each is listed as a project in Wrike.

Hi Ashley, thanks for sharing your use case here! It's great to hear about the optimization project, and I wanted to let you know that we're here to help in case any tips are needed. As for converting that amount of Projects into tasks - this does sound like a tricky job. Something I wanted to suggest, which could potentially help, is exporting the structure to Excel and tweaking the formatting so that Projects/Folders would follow the required formatting for tasks. After the necessary edits are made in the spreadsheet, it can be imported back into Wrike - this will create a brand new structure, and could save some time. Check out our XLS Export and Import article to learn more about formatting, and let me know if you have any questions, I'll be happy to help!

It's not actually possible to create a project with the XLS import. Would you have any other solution? We would really need to convert a task into project in our organization ! 

Thank you 

Hi Sébastien, while you can't create a Project via XLS import, you can create a Folder and then once the Folder is in the Workspace you can convert a Folder into a Project. I know that's a workaround, but hope that lets you use the XLS import functionality. 

Is there a way to turn a request into a project?  I cannot seem to be able to do this...the request appears to have become a task...which makes all the requesting above relevant to my workflow too...

Hi Shannon! When creating a Request Form from Account Management, it's possible to choose whether you want a task, Project, or Project from a template to be created upon Form submission:

Let me know whether this is what you were looking for!

I also vote for turning existing tasks into projects.

Please! Sometimes a task + subtasks grows in scope, and now everything needs to 'shift up' a level in the hierarchy--eg, Task A>>subtask A.1 are now Project A>>Task A.1 and there's room to add subtasks A.1.1, A.1.2, etc.

I'd like to vote for the ability to convert a task into a project.  It would be so useful when something grows in scope to be able to scale up as needed.

Thank you for adding your votes and keeping this topic active, everyone! 

This limitation makes following the How to Set Up GTD Using Wrike recommendation very tedious, especially at the team level...

GTD Step:

1. Capture: The team captures numerous ideas a day in the Inbox folder.
2. Clarify: When clarifying those ideas many turn out to be project-level in scope.
3. Organize: The manual "new project/copy[/mass edit]" steps above have to be performed for every single one of those project-level ideas, on a ongoing basis.

Is there another recommendation for modeling GTD in Wrike that wouldn't be impacted by this?

As others have brought up, I also think the ability to convert projects to tasks is equally important.

In the GTD tool I use for personal things converting tasks to projects, and vise-versa, can be done via drag-and-drop, or a single menu action/shortcut key.

I echo this request! Tasks often become projects and I'll have ample notes and to have to manually move those to a project is a pita. Thanks!

I add a vote

@Ian I understand. Apart from manually creating new tasks, I'm wondering if Request forms may work. You could set up a Request so that each submission creates a new Project. You would then be able to submit a form when you want to create a new Project. I know this isn't the functionality you're looking for but I wanted to suggest it in case it helps save time (vs. manually moving data from a task into a Project). 

@Hilary thanks for the feedback here. In terms of moving notes, do they need to be directly on the Project info panel, or could you move the existing task into the new Project and name the task something like "Project Basics"?

@Simon thanks!

This would be a great feature but I would like to add that it would be nice to go in both directions. Turn a task into a project as well as a project to a task. The reverse would be huge for us and I'm sure many other people.

Same here. It is a crucial feature for me while trying to implement gdt methology within wrike. We are currently evaluations wrike as our coorperatw solution and this will be one thing that holds us back. My issue with the manual workaround described above is, that especially older tasks allready have a lot of comments and attachments I would like to keep and manually move them all over could be very tedious depending on the tasks history. Bests, Thomas

I was quite shocked when I realized that it is not possible to turn a task into a project (when my search for a solution ended here).

Like others have mentioned it is an essential part of the GTD method. Collect ideas as tasks in a list.... and if it is too big of a task it should become a project easily (menu option or dragging into the folder/projects tree)

I absolutely support this important request!

Hi everyone, I really appreciate the comments here! Especially good to know about how this is an important aspect of GTD to everyone, I think this is a great way of looking at it.

Can we expect to see this functionality anytime soon?

I'm going to add my voice to the 'task to project' function request.

In my situation a series of 'account managers' are supposed to set up an initial project structure and delegate the bits of the project to the various teams. They often set up 'tasks' within the project for a piece of work that should really be treated as a sub project within the main project. An easy way to turn a task into a project would save my teams a lot of time and effort.