How to Archive a Project in Asana (2026 Guide)
When a project wraps up in Asana, you have three options: leave it cluttering the sidebar, delete it, or archive it. Archiving keeps the project intact and searchable while getting it out of your way, and unlike deleting, it’s reversible.
Here’s how archiving works in Asana in 2026, who can do it, and how it compares to deleting or exporting.
How to Archive a Project in Asana
Archiving is available on every Asana plan: Personal, Starter, Advanced, and Enterprise. The steps are the same on web and the desktop app. On mobile, archiving is supported but the menu lives in a slightly different spot (covered below).
Web and desktop
- Open the project you want to archive.
- In the project header, click the dropdown arrow next to the project name (it sits to the right of the project icon and color).
- Select Archive project from the menu.
- Confirm in the prompt. The project disappears from your sidebar and from the team’s project list.
The project is now hidden from default views but remains accessible. You can find it under your team’s project list by toggling Show archived projects, through universal search, or by clicking a direct link to it.
Mobile (iOS and Android)
- Open the project in the Asana mobile app.
- Tap the three-dot menu in the top-right corner.
- Tap Archive project.
- Confirm.
Note: Archiving a project does not archive the tasks inside it. The tasks still exist and still appear in the assignee’s My Tasks list and any other projects they’re attached to. If you want a task to disappear from someone’s My Tasks, mark it complete or remove it from the assignee.
What Archiving Actually Does
Archiving in Asana isn’t quite “delete with an undo button”, it’s a soft state that changes how the project shows up across the workspace.
| Behavior | When archived |
|---|---|
| Project visibility | Hidden from sidebar, team page, and most default views |
| Searchability | Still appears in universal search and reports |
| Tasks | Remain active, including in My Tasks and other projects |
| Read-only? | No: members with edit access can still modify tasks |
| Notifications | Project-level updates stop firing; task-level notifications continue |
| Recurring tasks | Continue to generate new instances unless you remove the recurrence |
| Reporting and dashboards | Project data still counts in workspace-level reports |
A common surprise: archived projects are not read-only by default. If you want to lock a project after archiving, so no one accidentally edits an old campaign, change the project’s privacy or remove edit permissions before you archive.
The other gotcha is recurring tasks. Archiving the project does not pause its recurring tasks. If a project has a weekly recurring “team standup” task, that task will keep generating instances after archive. Either delete the recurring task or change its recurrence to “Don’t repeat” before archiving.
How to Restore an Archived Project
Restoring is just as quick as archiving, and the project comes back exactly as it was, same members, same tasks, same custom fields.
- In the left sidebar, click the team that owned the project.
- At the bottom of the project list, click Show archived projects (or Browse > Archived projects, depending on your view).
- Click the project to open it.
- Click the dropdown arrow next to the project name in the header.
- Select Restore project.
The project moves back into the team’s active list and reappears in the sidebar for anyone who had it pinned.
If you can’t see archived projects at all, you may not be a member of the team that owns them. Ask a team admin to add you, or have them restore the project on your behalf.
Who Can Archive a Project?
Permissions depend on the project’s privacy setting and the member’s role:
- Project admin: Always can archive and restore.
- Edit access (member): Can archive in most cases. Can restore.
- Comment-only access: Cannot archive.
- Project guests: Cannot archive.
Workspace and organization admins can archive any project they have access to view, including private projects, through the admin console.
If the Archive project option is greyed out, you don’t have edit access to the project. The fix is to ask a project admin to either archive it for you or upgrade your role.
Archive vs. Delete vs. CSV Export
Archive isn’t your only option for cleaning up finished work. Here’s when to use each.
| Method | Reversible? | Tasks preserved? | Searchable later? | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Archive | Yes (Restore) | Yes | Yes | Completed projects you may reference again |
| Delete | Yes for 30 days (then permanent) | No | No (after 30 days) | Test projects, duplicates, mistakes |
| CSV export | N/A (one-way) | As a file, yes | Only outside Asana | Records you need for compliance or reporting |
| Archive + CSV export | Both | Yes (and as a file) | Yes | Closed projects with audit or handoff needs |
Archive is the right default. It’s reversible, takes a single click, and keeps the project’s data accessible if someone asks “what did we ship in Q3?” six months later.
Delete is for projects you genuinely never want to see again, test projects, accidental duplicates, abandoned drafts. Deleted projects sit in trash for 30 days, after which they’re permanently gone.
CSV export is a separate concern. Archive doesn’t take the data out of Asana, it just hides it. If you need a permanent offline record (for compliance, a client handoff, or migrating to another tool), export to CSV before or after archiving. See How to export Asana to Excel for the full export workflow.
Common Issues When Archiving
The Archive option is missing. You don’t have edit access to the project. Ask a project admin to archive it for you, or have them add you as a member with edit permissions.
Archived project still shows in someone’s sidebar. They probably starred or pinned it before archive. Starred archived projects remain visible to that user until they unstar.
Recurring tasks still firing. Archiving doesn’t pause recurrence. Open the recurring task, click the due date, and set repeat to Don’t repeat before archiving the project.
Notifications still arriving. Task-level notifications (assignments, comments, mentions) continue regardless of archive status. Project-level updates and status reports stop. To silence everything, remove yourself as a member of the project before archiving.
Reporting still includes the archived project. This is by design, archived projects count in workspace-level dashboards so you keep a complete history. To exclude them, filter your reports to active projects only.
Keep Project Cleanup From Becoming Its Own Project
Archiving a finished campaign is easy. Doing it consistently across dozens of projects, each with its own loose ends, recurring tasks to disable, members to update, exports to file, is where time goes. Carly is an AI assistant that connects to 200+ apps including Asana and handles the repetitive work for you, so the wrap-up doesn’t pile up.
More on Asana: How to export Asana to Excel · How to create a template in Asana · How to set a recurring task in Asana · AI agents for product managers · Best AI workflow automation tools
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