I occasionally need to move items from one project to another by deleting them and reposting them in the correct project. Sometimes, Basecamp users aren’t paying attention to the project they post an item in, and reposting that item necessitates re-mailing it to everyone if they are to take advantage of notifications when comments are posted (which is not ideal, everything starts to get duplicated).

While I appreciate that just educating people in posting to the right section would be the best way to deal with this, this is the real world and busy people don’t always think about this kind of thing. In a bulletin board it is really easy to move an item between fora if it is off-topic for the forum it is in, so to cut a long story short, it would be very useful to be able to move message threads between projects within Basecamp.

How about it?

I believe you are asking a remedy instead of a solution. I don’t think you are using project numbers, if you would, you wouldn’t have this problem. It would also save you a lot of time and avoid unnecessary stress among your team. There is a very good discussion about this here: http://forum.basecamphq.com/forums/2/topics/562

Hope this could help

I agree though that it would be really useful to be able to move items between projects or even merge whole projects. In my case I find that some projects that start out as exploratory R&D eventually get rolled into a larger ongoing projects and it would be nice to be able to move from the one into the other.

I’d find this useful in that if I have To-Do lists of deferred items for one project/release, I could copy the list into the next project/release instead of recreating it (I guess an import/export would serve the same purpose)

I have several times found myself in the same situations as Nathan’s (people posting in the wrong project) and Helix’s (one project getting merged into another). I wholeheartedly support the call for this very useful feature.

Thanks JPB, but I’m puzzled as to how project numbering is supposed to mitigate the issue of mis-posting of items, or the other issues identified here. While I’m a fan of numbering where appropriate, I’m not talking about running a huge number of concurrent projects, and would seek to maintain Basecamp as an approachable tool suitable for lay users.

The requirement to move items to a standalone project from an early exploratory area lends itself to the same request.

Moving message threads or other items is a pretty simple idea, isn’t it?

+1 for being able to move files from one project to another.

I have some general task type perpetual projects that spin off into more discrete well defined projects as users make suggestions. This would be helpful.

Hi Nathan,

I don’t know your specific need and situtuation. We don’t see this need but maybe others do. Using project numbers helps keeping stuff clear for us.

A project for example “EQU06-408 Equilis Wine Store ”. This is also linked to our timesheets and billing. When then the final design starts (new offer) we give a new project number “EQU06-418 Equilis Wine Store Final” .

Of course it would be nice to move stuff from one project to the other. But we prefer to keep it tight to the first project. To make the link we put the url of the first project in the “Overview page announcement”. If you wanne go there you just hit the link.

I prefer to focus on coaching my team to put things in the right place then running behind them and correcting there misinterpretation. With + 106 projects this could become a part time job ;-)

I also find this very important if we have to find something back after one year.

But as I said eveybody has different views , I just want to show how we deal with it.

Cheers

Thanks JPB – I fully agree with you that educating users in getting it right first time is by far the best way to go :-)

I came to the forums for the specific purpose of requesting/suggesting the ability to move items between projects. I’m glad the conversation is already going!

Yes, export/import would work for most of the time and I would be thrilled with that. But I’m sure a more elegant solution could be devised.

We need to move items between projects for several reasons:

1. Mistaken posting, like above. (And of course, we’d love to have perfect users too. When you get yours trained… :)

2. A to-do list in one project might grow into needing to have it’s own project. This actually happens a lot. We explore an opportunity and then, when it’s approved it suddenly needs more resources and deserves a project of it’s own.

3. We automatically import user/client requests via the API into a to-do list. It would be very useful to then be able to manually sort those into the right project.

It would also be useful for our administration to be able to search across projects.

I’m voting yes.

A to-do list in one project might grow into needing to have it’s own project. This actually happens a lot. We explore an opportunity and then, when it’s approved it suddenly needs more resources and deserves a project of it’s own.

We would love the ability to move To Do lists between projects, along with any time that has been logged to them, for this very reason.

Perhaps the ability to turn a To Do list, essentially a sub-project, into a separate and distinct project would also serve the same purpose?

Our company often has a to-do item that starts as pre-sales work and turns into sales work, at which point it needs its own project. Agreed.

+1,000,000 – I have many projects I’m moving around. A lot of my marketing projects start off in my “VOL 001 – Marketing” project… and as they grow… or they have a need for someone external to be involved, I have to setup a new project. I’d love to be able to move certain existing tasks lists & milestones into the new project. I’m guessing this is more involved than most of us realized in terms of the programming needed… so I don’t think we can expect it any time soon.

37S, what’s your perspective on this?

I’m in total agreement with this request. We have tasks which we start off with in a specific project which after a review, we then realise belong in another one to make implementation more realistic. It would be excellent if we could then move those tasks to the new project without having to enter everything again. BTW. We also have a scenario where people from some clients move to different parts of the organisation, hence belong to new clients, but we cannot change which client a person belongs to – bring that in!

<thinkingoutloud> If 37s is going to consider the ability to move items (posts, tasks etc) then really, imo, they should consider the ability to copy items from one project to another. If they do the latter it would offset (somewhat) the fact that there are no project templates (if you think about it, especially if one could select multiple items to copy), and once an item is copied to other projects one can elect to delete the original(s), which effectively mimics a move. </thinkingoutloud>.

• Not only should it be possible to move items between projects, but why can’t a post be posted to two projects? Sometimes a thread applies to an overlap area, so that would be good to have.

• The ability for administrators to search for a post across projects is pretty important. When you are managing a lot of projects, it can be hard to remember where you posted something.

We are evaluating Basecamp right now and this capabilitiy (or lack thereof) seems to be a glaring omission. My first intuition was that it was somehow left out to prevent people from gaming the project limitations (i.e. moving stuff to/from massive archived project?), but other than that I can’t think why it’s not in here?

From what I understand, you can have a coder write a copy project function for you using their API.

I have been using basecamp for only a few months but the real gripe I have is the inability to move todos and time between projects so if this could be an added feature at some stage in the future it would make my life so much easier.

+1

Another +1, not just from me. Other Basecamp users (on separate accounts) from our company have asked for such a feature again and again.

Move….copy….delete. Basic, fundamental stuff. People don’t get it right the first time. To err is human. To be able to fix …easily….is….well….friendly and helpful. To facilitate re-organization of projects is downright humane. Why the debate on such a basic feature? I don’t get it.

upcsforum. Completely agreed. I’ve just popped on here to find out how to delete a file. It seems the answer is you can’t. Correct?

Please build in the ability to move messages, files, and other posts across projects! We also find ourselves needing to change our top structure as we evolve our company and the projects within it. Thanks for your consideration. Any feedback from 37 Signals on this thread would be most appreciated!

+1 definately agree. The ‘non believers’ always state this as one of their biggest annoyances.