Multi-select - How to Select and Make Changes to Several Items at One Time

With multi-select, you can select multiple items at once and perform a wide variety of actions on those items. Have a long list of projects you want to make one person responsible for? Have a group of actions you want to change the forecast end date to the same day? Multi-select is what you need.

This article will show you the basics of how to use multi-select and the most common function we expect you will use. If you have more questions on how to use multi-select, comment below or chat with us via the chat widget.

Multi-select basics

In most screens, when you hover over a row a checkbox will appear next to the item (for touch devices, tap the row to expose the check-box). To open the multi-select toolbar, simply check an item.

Once you select a row, a toolbar of multi-select options will appear above the grid (1).

Now all the rows have check-boxes exposed so you can select all the items you want to make changes to (2).

You can also select all the rows in the view.

After you check the rows you want to edit, select the action you want to perform on those items. More multi-select options can be found in the three-dot menu on the right.

Here are the actions you can execute on multiple selected rows:

Edit Fields - change the person responsible, status, forecast end date, etc., see the example below
Change Follow Up - this only available from a To-Do List
Archive Items - this is handy when you are cleaning up old plans, breakdowns, messages, or lists
Remove Items - remove a chunk of items from a plan or from a work breakdown (this is not "Archive" or delete, it simply removes the item from the current plan/breakdown)
Add to Breakdown - add several supporting items to a goal or project's work breakdown; to perform this function you will need to know the name of the goal/project you want to add the items to
Add to Plan - add several items to a plan at once; this also requires you know the name of the plan you want to add to
Create Exercise - see the Create a Collaboration Exercise article to learn about this function Create a POV Collaboration Exercise
Add to Existing Exercise - this requires you to know the name of the exercise you want to add these items to
Save Template - create a work breakdown template by selecting the parent project and all the supporting projects you want to be in the template

To hide the multi-select toolbar, click the X on the right. You can also hide the multi-select toolbar by unchecking all the rows.

Edit the fields of multiple items

To see how multi-select works, let's look at a common situation when you want to edit multiple items at once. Let's say you are breaking down a large project into smaller steps and you want to assign a chunk of the work to one person. Select all the items you want to assign > and select Edit Fields.

On the Edit Fields screen, any changes you make will apply to all selected items. In this example, we want to assign Morgan Hayes as the responsible person for all selected projects and set their status to Not Started. To do this, update the Responsible field to "Morgan Hayes" and the Status field to Not Started, then click Save.

Adding extra fields to edit

Sometimes you may want to make changes to a field that is not in the suggested list. You can add another field to edit by clicking the blue plus > and selecting a new field from the dropdown.

Clearing fields

It is also possible to clear certain fields. For example, let's say you want to take Michelle's name off of the "Gather Requirements" projects.

Open multi-select Edit Fields and you will see that some fields can simply be cleared. Check the Clear checkbox > and Save.

Now Michelle's name has been taken off all of the select projects.