How to hide Completed Tasks in Asana: A Step-by-Step Guide

Whether you want to declutter your workspace or permanently remove completed tasks, Asana offers straightforward options to manage your tasks effectively.

We’ll give you a detailed step-by-step guide on how to hide completed tasks in Asana, how to delete the task, and also how to archive those tasks in this article.

To hide completed task in Asana, click on “Filter,” then click on “incomplete tasks,” select the three-dot button, then click “Save the layout as default.”

This will hide the completed tasks in your Asana dashboard, but to delete the tasks, click on the task, select the “Ellipsis menu,” and navigate to the “delete task” button.

How to Hide Completed Tasks in Asana

If you want to hide completed tasks temporarily from your workspace without deleting them, Asana provides a simple way to filter them out.

Step-by-Step guide on hiding tasks in Asana

Open Your Project: Go to the project or task list where the completed tasks are located.

By default, all tasks will be displayed. To focus only on incomplete tasks, because we don’t want unnecessary clutter in our project, click the Filter button.

Use the Filter: On the right side of the task list, click on the “Filter” button (represented by a funnel icon).

Select “Incomplete Tasks.”: From the dropdown menu, click on “Incomplete Tasks” to hide the completed tasks. The tasks will no longer appear in your view, keeping your workspace clean and focused on active tasks.

You can see here that I checked two tasks as completed; after filtering the tasks down to only show me the unfinished tasks, the tasks that are checked as completed are hidden.

Save the layout as default: Go to the “Ellipsis menu” beside the filter menu and then click on “save layout as default.”

Toggle to View Again: If you wish to view completed tasks again, simply uncheck the “Completed Tasks” filter option.

By hiding completed tasks, you keep your current tasks visible, and your project list uncluttered, improving your focus and workflow.

Learn more: “How to email a task to Asana“

How to Delete Completed Tasks in Asana

The previous steps shown in the guide will help you hide the tasks, but the tasks will be kept in the system if you need them.

If you want to permanently delete completed tasks from Asana, follow these steps.

Step-by-Step guide on deleting tasks

Go to Your Task List: Open the project or task list where your completed tasks are listed.

Click on the Task: Select the completed task you wish to delete.

Click on the arrow; this will take you to the details section. From there, click on the three-dot menu or more, then navigate to the delete section.

Delete the Task:

In the task details view, click on the three-dot menu (More options) in the upper-right corner.

From the dropdown, select “Delete Task.”

Confirm Deletion: Asana will ask for confirmation before deleting the task. There will be a popup notification in the bottom left corner, which will stay there for 15 seconds; you can undo the deletion within that time; there’s also an option that’ll come up on top of the task details, where you’ll have two options: 1. Undo and 2. permanently delete. Confirm to permanently delete the task. This will also delete all the subtasks.

Note that after selecting permanently delete, you cannot recover the task anymore. However, you can recover the tasks that you deleted without clicking on permanent deletion within 30 days

Learn more: “How to create an Asana template“

Pro tip for hiding completed task in Asana

There’s a more efficient and automated way to hide completed tasks. In Asana, you can use rules to automatically hide completed tasks from view, which helps keep your project board or task list clean and focused. Here’s a step-by-step pro tip for setting this up:

1. Implement a Rule to Redirect Completed Tasks to a “Completed” Section or Project:

• Navigate to your project and click “Customize” in the top-right.
• Go to your project and click on the “Customize” button in the top-right corner.
• Under “Rules”, click on “Create a Rule”.
• Trigger: Choose the trigger “Task completed”.
• Action: Select the action “Move task to section” (or choose “Move task to project” if you prefer to send completed tasks to a different project).
  • You can create a new section named “Completed” in your project and use this action.
• Optional: If you’d like to keep your board view tidy, you can choose to also “Remove from board” or set a rule to “Mark task as archived”.
• Click Save.

2. Filter for Incomplete Tasks:

• Once this rule is in place, you can filter your task view to only show incomplete tasks by:
  • Using the “Incomplete” filter option in your task list or board.
  • Sorting tasks by “Due Date” or “Priority” to highlight tasks that are still pending.

How to Archive Completed Tasks in Asana

Asana also supports archiving the tasks you’ve completed rather than throwing them away. Archiving helps you keep the tasks you have completed in view for future reference without consuming your working space.

Step-by-Step guide on archiving tasks

• Open Your Project: Click on the project/task list containing the tasks you would like to archive.
• Click on Project Name: Right in the top right corner of the project, click on the project name or the three dots beside it.
• Choose Archive: Select “Archive Project” from the dropdown menu. This will archive the whole project, including completed work.
• Asana will ask if you want to archive the project. Click OK, and the project will be archived.

View archived projects:

You can view archived projects at any time by going to your project sidebar and clicking on “Show Archived Projects.”

Archiving keeps your workspace tidy, and all task information is retained for later access.

When you restore archived tasks or projects, everything gets restored, so you can start working again or refer to them without any loss of data.

See more: “How to create a form in Asana“

Conclusion: Organizing tasks in Asana

Managing your tasks efficiently in Asana is essential for productivity. Nobody wants a cluttered workspace that is full of distractions and unnecessary tasks. We hope you learned how to clean up your Asana workspace by reading this article to focus on more relevant tasks. Also, deleting tasks is ideal when you want to remove unnecessary clutter, but always remember that it is permanent. Restoring archived projects gives you the flexibility to bring back any task or project as needed.

Read more: “Microsoft planner vs Asana“