Moving from Wrike to Kavanah is a spreadsheet migration, and it is worth saying that up front. Kavanah has no Wrike connector, no direct importer and no sync. What it has is a CSV import that recognises columns by name, and Wrike exports projects, folders and spaces to Excel. Between them they move the core of a project, the tasks, their status, owners and dates, and leave a predictable set of things behind. Here is the route, step by step, with the limits of each side.
1. What Wrike's Excel Export Contains
Wrike's help centre says an Excel export carries tasks and subtasks with their statuses, dependencies, assignees, dates, durations and time log entries, either for all tasks or only those matching the current view's filters. Its limits matter: an export stops at 65,000 rows and 256 columns, attachments and comments are not exported, and formula custom fields are left out of the Export Project to Excel option, as are Created Date, Completed Date and ID. Only regular users can export; Collaborators, Contributors and Viewers cannot. To export, open the space, project or folder, choose Export Project to Excel from the three-dot menu, and pick filtered or all tasks.
2. What Kavanah Reads From It
Open the Excel file and save it as CSV. Kavanah matches columns by their names: a task's title from a column called Task name, Task, Name, Title or Summary, plus Status, Priority, an assignee column such as Assignee, Assigned to, Owner or Responsible, Due date, Tags and Description. Wrike's own header names were not checked against a live export, so look at the header row and rename what differs. A row with no title is skipped. Imported into a new project, each status becomes a board column and assignees are matched to members by name or email. Each import takes up to 1,000 rows, and only the first tag on a task is kept.
3. Run the Import
Invite your team before you import, using the names or emails they have in Wrike, so assignees match. Then send the CSV to the task import API with a project name, from a script or the kvn command line; for a small file you can attach it in chat and ask the agent to import it. Split anything over 1,000 rows into several files first. Read the import report afterwards, invite anyone whose name matched no member, and reassign their tasks.
4. What You Rebuild by Hand
Wrike's export includes dependencies and time logs, but Kavanah's import does not read them, and it does not read custom fields or the folder hierarchy either. So rebuild the dependencies that matter (blocked by / blocks) on Kavanah's tasks, recreate the custom fields your reports filter on, turn Wrike request forms into request pages and automation rules into Kavanah automations, and set team capacity and budgets in the portfolio view. Keep the exported time logs in the spreadsheet if you need the history; new time goes into Kavanah's time tracker.
5. Keep Wrike as the Archive
Because attachments and comments never leave Wrike in an Excel export, the honest plan is to keep the export files and a Wrike account readable for as long as you might need the record, and to note in each new Kavanah project where the old history lives. Move one active project first, run a full planning cycle in it, and only then move the rest and set a renewal decision date.
A Wrike move is mostly a column-mapping exercise plus a short list of things to rebuild. For the full comparison of Kavanah, Wrike, Asana and monday work management, and the migration checklist we keep up to date, see our Wrike alternative page.
