It's Monday, and finance wants the project in Excel by noon. They want rows they can filter, sum and paste into a forecast. Asana has every one of those rows.
To export Asana to Excel takes about 2 minutes. Keeping that workbook right takes the rest of the week. This guide covers the export, the 3 things to fix once the file opens, and the reason the numbers drift.
The steps below come from Asana's and Microsoft's help pages, read on 21 October 2026.
The short answer
Asana exports a CSV file, a plain text table that Excel opens. There's no Excel workbook option. Open the project, click the dropdown arrow next to the project name, choose Export, then CSV.
Asana's help center says you can open the file "in a spreadsheet application like Microsoft Excel". No help page offers a native .xlsx download. Asana lists CSV and PDF export on every plan, the free Personal plan included.
To export tasks from more than one project, run the same export on a search view or on My Tasks. Comments don't come along, by forum reports, and Asana hasn't published a list of the columns you get. What the Asana CSV export includes covers the known columns and the gaps.
Export Asana to Excel in 6 steps
- Open the project in Asana in a web browser.
- Click the dropdown arrow next to the project title.
- Hover over Export. Asana's own pages label this menu 3 ways (Export/Print, Sync/Export, Export or sync), so look for the word Export.
- Choose CSV. JSON is the other format, and it's meant for software.
- Save the file. A small project downloads right away.
- A big project takes a detour. Asana shows a message that it is building your CSV and emails you when it's done.
The same export works on a search view and on My Tasks. That helps when the rows you need sit in several projects. Search for tasks due this month across your team's projects, then export the result as one file.
| What you need | Where to get it | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| One project | Project dropdown, Export, CSV | A CSV, downloaded or emailed |
| Tasks across projects | A search view, exported | A CSV |
| Your own tasks | My Tasks, exported | A CSV |
| Time entries | Time entries as CSV, a beta in limited availability | A CSV, on Advanced and above |
| The whole organization | Admin console, Settings, Domain export | JSON only, Enterprise+ and Legacy Enterprise |
| A dashboard | PowerPoint export | Enterprise and Enterprise+ only |
Open the CSV in Excel the right way
Double-clicking the file is the fast route. It's also where the dates go wrong.
Microsoft's help says Excel uses "the current default data format settings" to read each column of a CSV it opens. If your laptop expects day/month/year and the file has month/day/year, 03/04 turns into the 3rd of April. It should be the 4th of March. Any date with a day past 12 stays as text and won't sort with the rest.
Import the file instead:
- In a blank workbook, go to Data, then From Text/CSV. It sits in the Get & Transform Data group.
- Pick the Asana file and click Import.
- Check that Delimiter reads Comma. The preview updates as you change it.
- Click Load if every date looks right. Click Transform Data if any don't.
In the Transform Data window, right-click the heading of the date column. Choose Change Type, then Using Locale. Set the type to Date and the locale the file uses, such as English (United States). Load the result into the sheet.
Asana doesn't document the date format of its CSV export. Its CSV import does expect US month/day/year, which is a fair hint. Open the raw file in a text editor before you trust it, and find a due date you already know. That check takes 10 seconds and catches a wrong forecast before finance does.
3 things to fix in the workbook
Dates are the first fix, and the import above handles them. The next 3 show up once someone starts adding things up.
Time tracked arrives as 1:30
Asana's help gives the example directly. Asana exports a value of 1h 30min as 1:30. Excel reads 1:30 as a time of day, half past one in the morning.
One cell looks fine. A total breaks. Excel's clock rolls over at 24, so 30 logged hours show as 6:00. Select the total, press Ctrl+1, choose Custom, and type [h]:mm. Microsoft lists that code as elapsed time in hours, and it counts past 24.
For decimal hours on an invoice, multiply by 24 with =B2*24 and format the cell as a number. Time tracking needs Asana Advanced or above, so on Personal or Starter this column won't be in the file.
Subtasks and the Parent Task column
Asana's 2014 post announcing CSV export listed a Parent Task column "for subtasks". Asana doesn't publish the current column list, so open your file and look. When subtasks are there, each one is its own row. Build a pivot table on Parent Task to count subtasks per parent.
When subtasks are missing, or you can't tell which level they came from, Asana subtasks in Google Sheets explains why and what to do.
Comments and custom fields
Asana doesn't document whether comments or custom fields land in the CSV. Forum posts disagree. Check your own export before you promise a client either one.