Template Generator

Todoist Support links for templates

Updated - 13 May 2024

Added the DESCRIPTION column, between CONTENT & PRIORITY. Tasks can now have descriptions added to them. It's possible to specify these within templates too!

Updated - 30 Sep 2020

Just to flag that this now supports the new TYPE element of meta which needs to be paired with either view_style=board or view_style=list in the CONTENT column.

As you'd expect, this just tells Todoist to import the template as either a board or as a list. So just select which one you want in cell B2 on the template.

Finally, I added support for project_note in the TYPE column, in addition to task, note and section as was previously the case.

Todoist can be a very powerful and useful tool. Unfortunately, there's invariably a bit of friction endured by the user when attempting to get the last 5% out of the service.

As you'll see in the support links above, although Todoist Templates are a great feature for projects you repeat time and time again, they are far from straightforward

and a bit convoluted to set up. The purpose of this Template Generator is to remove some of the "heavy lifting" involved in populating a csv template ahead of

importing into Todoist. It does this by using formulas/functions in Google Sheets to speed things up and also make it easy to switch between 'relative' and 'absolute' dates.

The tab, "Template for Download," is where all the magic happens. The good thing about Todoist templates is, as long as you've got the first 9 columns is the csv populated

with the headings which conform to the template layout (blue) you can have no end of computational columns, but they will all be ignored upon import of the csv. So there's

no fiddling around with ranges etc; just go to File > Download > csv and you've got a file ready for import into Todoist.

How "Template for Download" works

You will also see the notes below in the "CONTENT" column in the next tab which you will need to clear out (see instructions) before using the template for yourself.

Note, this has been configured for English date input. You may need to change the default language and tweak some of the formulas to use in your desired language.

Please refer to the Todoist guides regarding date language. All tasks must have the DATE_LANG populated with an appropriate language flag. The generator is configured

to do this automatically with "en" at present.

It is designed to ease using Todoist's template facility

Enter your tasks or sections here for boiler-plate / repeat

projects which you regularly use i.e., employee onboarding

which has a predetermined timeline / critical path

What are the benefits?

This spreadsheet has 2 main benefits

1) It makes entry quicker by auto-populating fields & reducing errors

2) You can move all the tasks from relative dates i.e., "in 2 days"

to future, absolute dates, en masse, by simply entering a date

into cell Q1 (in the format DD//MM/YY) and the sheet will switch the info over to dates

When your project content here is complete?

- In Sheets, ensure you are on the "Template for Download," tab

- Go to File > Download > Comma-separated values

- Save the csv to your computer

- In Todoist on web/desktop, ether make a new project or navigate to an existing project which you would like to add your template's content to

- Either press "W" or go to the 3 dots menu at top-right. From Click 'Import from CSV'

- From drop down menu, click 'Import from CSV'

- Drag your downloaded CSV file to the import window to start the import

- Your project will then be populated with the tasks from the csv file

How do I reset this template?

There is a custom menu called "Reset Ranges". Here you can

select specific ranges to reset, or do them all, en masse, by

clicking on "Reset All User Ranges." As these are Apps Scripts, you

need to authorise use the first time you run one of these. This is

perfectly normal. You can also reset all user ranges by using the

keyboard shortcut ctrl+alt+shift+9 to run it

If you've got a list of tasks, say, in a .txt file, just paste them in to B3 in the "Template for Download." Incidentally, you can do the same thing in Todoist and it will ask you

if you want to add/create 'x' number of new tasks. The benefit of using the Template Generator ahead of import is that you can set sections and notes (comments) as well

You don't have to use dates at all. You could still just paste your text file into B3. The benefit of doing this is that you can easily convert Content Type'from a 'task' to a 'section,'

ahead of import to Todoist. Unfortunately, a task in Todoist cannot be converted to a section, so when pasting-in multiple lines of text, as mentioned above,

it will only ever create multiple tasks. So by using the template generator, even for non-dated tasks, you have a lot more control over the structure of a project.

Key to cells in "Template for Download"

= The 10 required headers for the Todoist Template to facilitate import into Todoist. They MUST be in this format (protected)

= User entry fields

= Formulas. These should be in protected ranges