Getting started
Importing your work
Bring projects, tasks, notes and dates over from a spreadsheet, a board export or a project export — without retyping any of it.
Your work probably lives somewhere already — a spreadsheet, a board tool, a project tool. You do not have to retype it. Open Projects and follow the import link, or go straight to /import, and give us the file. We show you exactly what it would become before anything is created, and email you when it is done.
Only an admin of the team can import, because an import can create projects. The file can be up to 20 MB, which is far more rows than any team we have met.
The three kinds of file we read
We work out which kind a file is from the file itself, so you just upload it:
- A spreadsheet, saved as CSV. Any spreadsheet program can save one. The first row names the columns; the only column you must have is a title.
- A board export, as JSON. Board tools can export a whole board as one JSON file, usually from the board's own menu under something like Print, export and share.
- A project export, as CSV. Project tools can export a project as a CSV with their own fixed columns; we recognise the shape and read it accordingly.
What a spreadsheet's columns become
Columns are found by their name, in any order and any capitalisation — "Due Date", "due_date" and "DUE-DATE" are the same column. Every column is optional except the title.
| Your column | What it becomes |
|---|---|
| Title, Name, Task, Summary or Subject | The task's title — the one required column |
| Project or Board | The project, created if it is new. A blank cell puts the task in your catch-all project |
| List, Section, Column, Phase, Stage or Bucket | The task list inside the project |
| Status or State | One of our five: open, in progress, blocked, done, canceled. Words like "to do", "doing", "wip", "on hold", "closed" and "won't do" are understood; a word we do not know leaves the task open, and the preview says so |
| Done, Complete or Completed | Done when the cell says yes ("true", "x", "1", a tick) |
| Priority | Urgent, High, Medium, Low or Some Day. "P1", "critical", "normal", "minor" and friends are understood; blank means Medium |
| Assignee, Owner, Assigned To or Email | Matched to a person on your team by email first, then by name. Anyone we cannot match is listed, and their tasks arrive unassigned — nobody is invited or emailed |
| Due, Due Date or Deadline | The due date. We read the common shapes: 2026-09-15, 9/15/2026, 15/09/2026, Sep 15 2026, 15 Sep 2026 |
| Estimate, Hours or Effort | The estimate — 1.5, 1.5h, 90m, 2h 30m and 2:30 all work; a bare number is hours |
| Description, Details or Body | The task's description |
| Labels, Label, Tags or Tag | Labels, separated by commas or semicolons, created if they are new |
| Parent or Parent Task | Makes the row a subtask of the row whose id or title this is |
| Notes or Note | One note on the task |
| ID, Task ID, Ref or Key | Remembered, so importing the same file twice adds nothing |
What a board export becomes
One board becomes one project. Inside it:
- The board's lists become task lists, in the board's order.
- Each card becomes a task: its name, its description, its due date, its labels (created if new), and the first person on it, matched to your team by name.
- A card's checklist items become subtasks of that task, done where they were ticked.
- What people wrote on a card becomes notes on the task, each carrying who wrote it and when in its first line.
- An archived card, and every card in an archived list, arrives as done — put-away work stays put away.
Board tools have no priority, so every card arrives as Medium. Attachments, cover images and custom fields are not in the export, so they do not come across; the files are worth bringing over by hand for the tasks that still need them.
What a project export becomes
- Each row's Name is the task's title, and its Notes column is the task's description.
- The Projects column names the project, created if new; the Section/Column is the task list inside it.
- Assignee Email is matched to your team by email, falling back to the name.
- Due Date, Tags and Completed At become the due date, the labels, and done.
- Parent Task makes a row a subtask. Where the old tool nested subtasks inside subtasks, ours go one level deep, so a deeper row becomes a subtask of the top-level task — the preview tells you about each one.
The conversation on each task is not part of that CSV export, so there are no notes to bring from it.
The preview, and what happens next
Before anything is created you see the whole plan: how many projects, lists, tasks, subtasks and notes the file holds, which labels would be created, which people matched and which did not, and any rows that cannot become tasks — each with the reason. If the projects in the file would not fit your plan's room, the page says so plainly and nothing is imported until there is room; archiving a finished project or moving up a plan both make room.
Press Import it and the work happens in the background. You can leave the page; we email you when it is done, with the same counts.
Running the same file twice is safe
Every project, list, task and note an import creates is written down against the id it had in your file. Import the same file again — because a run was interrupted, or because you were not sure it finished — and everything already here is found and left alone, so nothing is duplicated. A project or label that already exists with the same name is reused rather than created again, so importing into a team you have already set up lands the work in the right places.
What does not come across
Files attached in the old tool, and exports from other tools than these three, are not read yet. If you have one of those, or a file that will not read, write to us — bringing your work in is exactly the kind of thing we help with.