The Scenario
You are a consultant onboarding a new client. They have a specific taxonomy of work categories and you need 15 custom Todoist labels created from a Labels tab in your Excel workbook, then those labels applied to 80 pre-existing tasks — the task IDs and their label assignments are in the Tasks tab.
The bad version of this afternoon:
- You open Todoist, go to Labels, and create each of the fifteen labels one by one
- You then open each of the eighty tasks and apply the label from a dropdown
- Some tasks need two labels. Some need three. The dropdown is slow
- Around task forty-five you start misclicking and applying the wrong labels
- You finish at 5 PM with seventeen tasks showing no labels and confidence at zero.
The fast version is one prompt.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI is an AI agent inside your Excel workbook that reads the Labels tab, creates all fifteen labels, then reads the Tasks tab and applies the right labels to every task in one pass.
Open the SheetXAI sidebar and type:
Create a new Todoist label for each entry in the 'Label Name' column of the Labels tab. Then go to the Tasks tab and update each task with the ID in column A to include the label or labels listed in column C (comma-separated). Write 'Done' or the error into column D of the Tasks tab.
SheetXAI creates all fifteen labels and then applies each task's assigned labels across all eighty tasks.
What You Get
All labels created and applied in one pass:
- 15 labels created — with the exact names from your Labels tab
- 80 tasks updated — each with the correct label or labels applied from column C
- Multi-label support — tasks with comma-separated labels in column C get all of them applied
- Column D status — 'Done' or the error message for every task row
Labels are created before any assignment runs, so you will never hit a "label not found" error mid-way through.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
Label taxonomies and task assignment workbooks are rarely in perfect sync on day one.
When some label names in the workbook already exist in Todoist
The client already has a partial label set from a previous project.
Check which labels in the 'Label Name' column of the Labels tab already exist in Todoist. Write 'Exists' into column B for those and 'Created' for newly created ones. Then apply labels to all tasks in the Tasks tab using column A (task ID) and column C (label names).
When label names in the Tasks tab are spelled inconsistently
The Tasks tab uses 'client-work' but the Labels tab has 'Client Work'.
Before assigning, normalize the label names in column C of the Tasks tab to match the canonical names in the Labels tab. Use fuzzy matching: 'client-work', 'Client Work', and 'clientwork' should all resolve to the same label. Then apply the normalized labels to each task.
When you want a label usage summary after completing the assignment
The client wants to see which labels are most-used in the kickoff deck.
Create all labels in the Labels tab and apply them to all tasks in the Tasks tab. Write status into column D. Then write a 'Summary' tab with one row per label showing: label name and number of tasks it was applied to, sorted from most-used to least-used.
When the entire setup needs to happen in one shot
You are onboarding from scratch: labels, project, sections, tasks, and label assignments all in one operation.
Do the following in order: (1) Create all labels in the Labels tab. (2) Create a new Todoist project named 'Client Onboarding — Acme' with sections from the Sections tab. (3) Create all tasks from the Tasks tab in their correct sections using columns for task name, due date, and section. (4) Apply labels from column D (comma-separated) to each task. Write 'Done' or the error into column E of the Tasks tab for each row.
The pattern: the taxonomy lives in the workbook. SheetXAI reads it, creates everything in the right order, and applies every assignment.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open any label taxonomy workbook or task import workbook, then ask it to create the labels and apply them all in one prompt. The Todoist integration is included in every SheetXAI plan. For related workflows, see how to create a sectioned project from an Excel workbook or the Todoist in Excel overview.