Understanding Planner plan options

Hello! First time posting because I'm not an M365 admin at my company so apparently cannot contact Microsoft directly. We are a small company with about 25 employees and have started using Planner to...

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RobSoto
Jul 16, 2026
Hi jessicaobrien,
You’ve got the right idea about how Planner works. Even with Planner 3, there isn’t a built‑in way to recover a task once it’s been deleted. Planner doesn’t have a recycle bin or restore option. The Planner 3 license tier does give you task history, but that history only exists while the task is still around.
If the plan owner has Planner 3, everyone else can still use the board normally. They can create tasks, assign them, add checklist items, and comment. They just won’t see the premium features themselves.
And you're correct, you'll need a third‑party backup solution to recover deleted tasks. A few well‑known options that support Planner backup are:
AvePoint Cloud Backup
Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365
Barracuda Cloud‑to‑Cloud Backup
Keepit
Synology Active Backup for Microsoft 365
These tools can back up Planner tasks and restore them if something gets deleted by accident.
Hope this helps!
-Rob

RobSoto

Iron Contributor

Jul 16, 2026

Hi jessicaobrien,

You’ve got the right idea about how Planner works. Even with Planner 3, there isn’t a built‑in way to recover a task once it’s been deleted. Planner doesn’t have a recycle bin or restore option. The Planner 3 license tier does give you task history, but that history only exists while the task is still around.

If the plan owner has Planner 3, everyone else can still use the board normally. They can create tasks, assign them, add checklist items, and comment. They just won’t see the premium features themselves.

And you're correct, you'll need a third‑party backup solution to recover deleted tasks. A few well‑known options that support Planner backup are: