How to import your tasks into Raenow with a CSV file

If you're starting with Raenow and you've already got a list somewhere else, you don't have to retype it. Raenow reads a CSV file — the plain, universal format nearly every task app and spreadsheet can produce — and brings your tasks in as its own. A few minutes and a file, rather than an evening of re-entry.

This guide covers what import does, what it brings across, and the exact steps to do it.

Before you start: import happens on the web

Import runs in the Raenow web app at my.raenow.app, on a computer. It isn't in the iPhone app — picking and reading files is a job desktops do well and phones do awkwardly, so import lives where it works cleanly. Once your tasks are in, they sync to your phone like everything else. So: import on the web, then pick up your phone and they're there.

If you're mostly an iPhone user, this is the one thing to do at a desk.

What a CSV needs

A CSV is just a table saved as plain text — one row per task, columns for the details. Raenow needs only one thing to work: a column with the task's title. Everything else is optional. If your file also has columns for the project a task belongs to, a due date, or notes, Raenow can read those too — but a file that's nothing more than a list of titles imports perfectly well.

You don't need to format the file a particular way ahead of time. Whatever columns your file happens to have, you'll tell Raenow which is which in the next step — so a file exported from almost anywhere will do.

Importing, step by step

1. Open Raenow on the web at my.raenow.app and sign in.
2. Go to Settings → Account. Under Your data, tap Import CSV.
3. Choose your CSV file. Raenow reads it and looks at the columns.
4. Map your columns. Raenow guesses which column is the title, which is the project, and so on — but you have the final say. For each field, pick the matching column from your file, or leave it as none if your file doesn't have it. The only one Raenow insists on is the title. This is where a file from anywhere becomes readable: you're telling Raenow how to read your file, whatever its columns are called.
5. Check the preview. Before anything is saved, Raenow shows you how many tasks will come in and a sample of the first few titles. Glance at them — if something that isn't a real task has slipped in (some apps tuck a stray header or setting into their exports), you'll see it here and can go back rather than importing it.
6. Import. Your tasks are created, and any projects named in your file are created with them.

That's it. You'll land on a short summary telling you how many tasks came across.

What comes across, and what happens next

Import brings in the things a CSV can carry: your task titles, the projects they belong to, their due dates, and any notes. Projects are created automatically — if ten of your tasks name a "Home renovation" project, Raenow makes that project and files them under it.

What it doesn't bring in is everything that's particular to Raenow — whether a task needs your laptop, or good light, or waits on another task; how much energy it takes. No other app records those, because no other app works the way Raenow does, so there's nothing in the file to read. Your imported tasks arrive as clean titles, filed into projects, waiting for you to add that context.

And that's the honest shape of it: import gets your tasks in; it doesn't finish the job. Your imported tasks land ready to organize, not pre-arranged. The next move is to open the Organize screen and go through them — adding the conditions that let Raenow surface the right task at the right moment. That's the step where a plain imported list becomes a list that knows when it's relevant. It's worth doing, and it's the point of the app.

Nothing is lost in the meantime. Everything you imported is there, in your projects, exactly as it came in — you're adding to it, not racing to fix it.