Tutorial: Quickly Create Folders/Tasks and Rename Them with Excel

Looking for a way to quickly mass create Wrike folders and tasks and rename them easily? Here's a trick: use Microsoft Excel.

One of the tips we mentioned in our blog post 4 Common Mistakes New Wrike Users Make, was to include the project name in the names of its subfolders. For example, under the "Client A" project folder you can have subfolders such as: "Client A Content," "Client A SEO," and "Client A Social." This way, any notifications that are sent will include the necessary context so your teammates can get right to work.

The problem is: manually editing the name of each subfolder every time you start a new client folder would be pretty time consuming. So take advantage of Wrike's Excel export functionality to quickly mass-create folders and tasks. Excel's "find and replace" function lets you rename subfolders systematically. Here's how to do it:

Creating Wrike Folders & Renaming Them with Excel

1. Edit your folder template using "XXX" as a placeholder (or whatever set of unique characters you prefer). This will be useful later on when you're using Excel's "find and replace" function.

2. Export it to Excel. This will be your folder template for similar projects.

3. When you need to start a new project, open up this Excel document and do a "find and replace" with your project name (or client name) replacing the "XXX" placeholder.

4. Import this new file into Wrike using Wrike's "Excel import" functionality:

While this process may seem like a lot of work to do each time you set up a recurring project, it actually takes less than 30 seconds. The first two steps only need to be done once for each type of project or process. After that, just do another "find and replace" and import into Wrike to generate a new project from the same template.