How to change many tasks at once

When a launch slips a week, you do not want to open forty tasks one by one. In the List view of a department or a project, ticking tasks gives you one bar that acts on all of them.

Tasks themselves are introduced in What are tasks?, and the List, Board and Calendar views in How to work a list, a board and a calendar.

Where does it work?

On the List tab of a department or a project, under Work › Departments. Each task row there has a checkbox at its left edge. Tick one and a bar appears at the foot of the screen reading 1 selected, and the count grows as you tick more.

Only task rows have a checkbox, so tick each task you want. Clear the whole selection with the X at the end of the bar.

To act in bulk on work from Work › My tasks, a board or a calendar, open the department or project list that holds it, or ask the Agent as described below. The Agent itself is introduced in What is the Agent?.

What can you do to a selection?

• Complete marks every selected task done.
• Move to sends them all to one status, such as In progress.
• Reschedule gives them all one due date. Clear due date at the foot of its calendar takes their dates away instead.
• Assign gives them all to one person. Unassign takes the person off.

Work in batches of up to 200 tasks per action.

Assign lists the people in the department the tasks belong to, with Unassign at the foot of the list.

How do you read the result?

A message reports exactly what happened. When everything worked it says so, for example "30 tasks moved to In progress."

When only part of it worked, it says that instead, for example "24 moved to In progress, 6 couldn't be.", with the reason underneath. Read the reason before you try again, because the same selection gets the same answer.

Two reasons come up:

• "You can't edit some of these." Part of the selection sits in a department where you cannot edit tasks. Every task is checked against your rights in its own department; see How to work out who can do what in your workspace.
• "Some are waiting on an unfinished task." Blocked tasks were left as they were. One task at a time, Tideswell offers Complete anyway or Move anyway; for a whole selection, deal with the blocked ones individually, per How to break a task down and put it in order.

Where do moved tasks land on a board?

At the top of the status they moved to. If the order inside a column matters to your team, drag the few that need to sit lower afterwards.

What is the fastest way to reschedule a slipped week?

Open the project's List tab, tick the tasks that moved, and use Reschedule with the new date. That is one action instead of one per task.

Clearing dates works the same way and is the tidier move when work is going back to the backlog. A task with no due date leaves the calendar and the Due soon list on Work › Tasks.

Can the Agent change many tasks for you?

Yes. Ask the Agent panel in plain words, such as "push all my tasks back 7 days" or "give every open lookbook task to Priya Raman". It answers with a review card, and nothing changes until someone approves it.

One card can make the same change to up to 100 tasks: a status, an assignee, one due date for all of them, or each task's own due date moved by a number of days. A task with no due date keeps none. The changes are made together, and one Undo takes them all back.

This works from any page, so it suits tasks spread across lists. See How to approve, refuse or undo a suggested change for the card and who can approve it.