Is there a way to group select multiple lines and convert them to tasks?

[birv2]

I made a number of tasks, each on their own line, before getting the Tasks plugin. I tried to select all of them and then convert them to tasks. But it only does the one where the cursor currently resides.

Is there some way to mass or group select and convert to simple tasks?

[claremacrae]

Hi @birv2

I would like to make sure I understand your vault's situation.

What does one of your existing tasks look like?
Is it like:

- [ ] do stuff

You don't need to have a global filter in Tasks. If you don't specify one, all the tasks that look like the above will be recognised, and you don't need to do anything at all to change them.

If no, then what do you mean by "convert them to tasks" please?

[birv2]

Thank you for the reply. Mine look like:

do stuff
do more stuff
even more stuff
etc.

I thought if I group selected them and selected Create|Add Task, it would do it for all of them. Clearly I'm missing something? Do I have to make them a list (hyphen space) first? And by "convert them to tasks", I guess I meant have them now appear with the checkbox in front of them.

[claremacrae]

Ah right, thanks @birv2.

Currently the Tasks command "Toggle task done" unfortunately only works on one line at a time. There is a recent feature request to make it work on a multi-line selection but this has not been done yet.

The Solution

I would recommend using the built-in Obsidian command "Toggle checkbox status", which does support multi-line selections.

It changes this:

sdfasdfa
asdfasdfaasdf

to this in a single step:

- [ ] sdfasdfa
- [ ] asdfasdfaasdf

If you use a Tasks global filter

I don't recommend adding a Tasks global filter unless you are sure that you need that control - it just makes it all a bit more error-prone as it is easy to forget to add the filter when typing tasks. (And it is easy to filter out particular files or folders in your tasks query blocks.)

However, if you do use a global filter, you then use "Search & replace in current file" to convert
[ ]
to
[ ] #your-filter

[birv2]

That's genius. Exactly what I was looking for. Thank you!

[claremacrae]

Super. You’re welcome!