Planner: Export your entire plan to Excel for powerful analysis, sharing, and more
Published Jun 24 2019 10:56 AM 299K Views

(Please note - this feature is only currently available in the Planner web app (https://tasks.office.com) and not when using Planner via the SharePoint web part or within Teams)

 

Planner comes with some pretty cool out-of-the-box tools for keeping your team on track. In-app features like red highlights for late tasks and color-coded labels provide visual cues for quickly finding tasks that need attention. There’s also the Charts view, which gives you different visual representations of progress, especially now with charts filtering.

 

But there may be times when the simplicity of these tools—and simplicity is our goal with Planner—isn’t quite enough. For more robust plan options, you can now export your entire plan to Microsoft Excel. From conducting more detailed analysis to sharing your plan’s status, Export to Excel gives you a broad range of additional capabilities for keeping your plan on schedule and your plan’s stakeholders up to date.

 

Exporting your plan to Excel is just a couple clicks away—literally. Within the Planner web app, click the “…” at the top of the screen, then select “Export plan to Excel.” And you’re done. Your plan will automatically download as an Excel file to your machine.

 

select.png

 

The downloaded file includes just about all the details from your plan (e.g., assigned to, start and due dates, description, labels, and more), with each task getting its own row in the spreadsheet. The top of the sheet includes all-up plan information, including plan name, plan ID, and date of export to ensure you’re looking at the latest information.

 

exportoexcel.png

 

There are countless use cases for Export to Excel. Below are just few scenarios to help you get started with this newest Microsoft 365 integration.

 

Archiving: Excel can provide a simple method for archiving your completed plans. Export all your plan details to Excel, store that Excel file somewhere safe (like OneDrive for Business), and purge that plan from Planner to keep your hub clean and organized.

 

Analysis: The use cases here are nearly endless. Choosing from a host of Excel’s analysis tools, you can quickly find outliers in your plan; take inventory of completed tasks, which are hidden by default in Planner; sort and filter based on elements not available with Planner chart filters, like who created the task and the task checklist items; build PivotTables and helpful graphs, like Burndown Charts; and, much, much more. Plus, connecting Excel data to Power BI is easier than ever today, giving you yet another option for visualizing critical plan details.

 

Merging plans: There are almost certainly plans in your hub that are somehow related; maybe they share the same executive team or are part of a multi-year strategic initiative. There’s no way to analyze these plans together in Planner—but you can in Excel. By exporting each plan to Excel individually, and then manually merging those files into a single spreadsheet, you can surface new insights about related plans.

 

Printing: Excel gives you a tabular view of your plan details that may be easier to consume for some as a printed document than a Planner plan board.

 

Sharing: There’s currently no way to give access to only some parts of your Planner plan—someone either has access to all of it or they don’t have access at all. This works fine in most cases, but there may be times when you want to share a plan’s status without also sharing all its minute details. Export to Excel can help you do just that. By bringing your plan into Excel, you can easily delete the columns of information you don’t want to disseminate. This can be particularly useful for giving a high-level plan summary to executives without bogging them down with unnecessarily details (or adding them to yet another plan).

 

These are just a few of our ideas of how Export to Excel can help you get more out of Planner—but we want to hear how you’re using it! Leave us a comment below on your experiences so far. We’re constantly looking for ways to improve features like this one and your input for doing that is crucial. Send us ideas for future integration capabilities or enhancements to current ones, like adding the ability to import items from Excel back into Planner, through our UserVoice site. And keep visiting Tech Community for all the latest Planner news and to engage directly with the Microsoft Planner team.

109 Comments
Iron Contributor

Does this also mean we can import from excel?

Brass Contributor

GCC and GCC High instances?

Brass Contributor

Please also allow import from Excel

Copper Contributor

Yay! Just in time for end of year reporting!

 

Is there an easy way to sort by date in the columns in Excel? All I can find is A to Z, and it lumps all the months together, regardless of year. Some Excel trick I don't know?

Brass Contributor

I can find the export option in the web version of Teams, but not in the desktop app. Does it appear there as well (and I'm just a little blind)?

 

Thanks!

Silver Contributor

Finally :)

Silver Contributor

In the article it says it works in web version of Planner. So i guess same applies to Teams (only in web version of Teams).

Brass Contributor

Hmm, dates don't come in to excel as dates.  Pretty simple to do guys!

 

Also, need to be able to export, update en masse and re-import. that's the biggest challenge with planner today.  Especially the ability to update linked dates.  So when moving one date, all other related dates move appropriately.

Copper Contributor

works great!  Thank you Microsoft!

Brass Contributor

Thanks! That is definitely helpful! Could you please add 2 columns in Excel showing the latest comment of each task (if any) and the date of that latest comment (if any)? That would be even more helpful for tasks progress analysis!

Brass Contributor

Will this be incorporated into the Desktop version?

Deleted
Not applicable

For those folks requesting to sort by date, it's pretty easy: just select all your data (CTRL+A) and in the Home Tab, Choose to "Format as Table." This auto-filters all the fields and allows you to sort and/or filter to your heart's content.

Format as a TableFormat as a Table

 

 

 

 

Dates are automatically formattedDates are automatically formatted

 

Copper Contributor

Column Check List Items: 

Is it possible to have a Hard Return after each line item in the cell? (Alt Enter)

Adding a comment column would be helpful too. 

Thanks to the project team this is a great step forward. 

 

Copper Contributor

I know the REST API already supports pulling the plan. Is there any way I can pull the Excel export?

Copper Contributor

Simple, efficient, good for me !

Very helpful new feature
Copper Contributor

@Deleted,

How did you get your date columns in your screen shot to be formatted with year first? Mine display as Month/Day/Year, so they don't sort correctly. I tried changing the format of the cells to that other date format, but it did nothing. Could be my crummy Mac version of the program though.

 

Copper Contributor

It doesn't appear this is available in the Teams desktop Application. Is this coming in a future update?

Copper Contributor

This is great! Looking forward to import from Excel!!!

Brass Contributor

This is excellent.  However is it possible to include the commentary in the planner to be exported to excel too.

Steel Contributor

Export to Excel seems to me like a workaround while a proper reporting API would be much more helpful. The Graph Connect Reporting API looks promising. I hope Planner will be a part of it soon.

Copper Contributor

Thank you for adding this feature!
I have a first feed back, and it's a PRIMARY request to make sense to this feature.
We need a linked file (as a Query); not a static file.
At now, we manage tasks in Planner, and in excel report, my Resp. insert Priority and estimated Time completion in two column out of planner.
It's very important to have a file up to date in real time for Planner extracted column!
Thank you in advance

Copper Contributor

Hi team, excellent evolution to permit to export planner activities to excel spreadsheet. 

This will give us condition to have statistics.

One suggestion to improve the planner even more is the possibility to insert time in the activities.

We need to have the statistics to know how long time we spend in each activities and this should appear in the exported spreadsheet.

 

Copper Contributor

This is a great start!

Please add the ability to export all of the comments. For archiving purposes all of the comments would also be required. 

Copper Contributor
THANK YOU! This is huge! However, could you please please please add the comments to be exported too?? I think most of us using it as archiving purposes.
Copper Contributor

I dont now why, but id plan and id task is illegible text:

 

Id. de plan XgxtR0kcPkWFn5aaxbaLlJcAGu3h

 

Id. de tarea 
_KEfM8YFdka5BPcitOqX3pcABDv4
Brass Contributor

For automation I need a Planner connector to Power BI.

Copper Contributor

Great thanks for this functionality 

Concerning the checklist, what is the extract logic of éléments because I can't find the order as it is on the Task in Planner and we just have the info x/y are checked so I can't summarize the remaining elements? 

Thank you in advance :)

Copper Contributor

This is an excellent start! Thank you!  To give this complete functionality, please add the ability to export comments (at least the most recent comment). Until then, it is not sufficient for my personal needs. 

Copper Contributor
I have all task's listed already on an excel spreadsheet how do I export to MS Planner?
Silver Contributor

As the title says, this option is to export your plan TO excel, not from Excel to plan.

Copper Contributor

Thank you for adding the feature of exporting to Excel, if there could also be an added feature to include in the task description for level of importance such as the three !!! symbol that is included in emails or simple messaging applications. This has come across many conversations once I had the ability to  export. 

!- Low importance - 1

!!- Medium ""- 2

!!!- High ""- 3

Copper Contributor

I have an issue with the "Checklist Items" Field.

In the Export, this field is lost for a consistent range of rows.

 

example:

 

Completed Checklist ItemsChecklist Items
0/1 
  
0/2 
0/2 
0/1 
0/2 
Brass Contributor

Please Add the functionality of Merging plans in Planner. 

Brass Contributor

The sequence of checklist items is wrong. Tasks should be listed in checklist items column in the same sequence as in the planner app. Also an indicator which task is finished is missing.

Copper Contributor

I can't seem to locate the “…” at the top of the screen, then select “Export plan to Excel.” I've tried in the web version and the desktop version. Am I missing something? Perhaps its the version of the software; not sure.

 

Please help.

Brass Contributor

@M_Parent You only can find that option within the plan on the web App as belowPlanner [Web App] / Plan viewPlanner [Web App] / Plan view

Brass Contributor

@Aingersoll  looking for a solution I found this in MS FLOW [↓] so we could create higher level plans... or whatever you can imagine!
Capture.JPG

Copper Contributor

Is there a way to automate the export from planner and send it as attachment?  Maybe using microsoft flow?

Copper Contributor

The export is missing data in the Description and Checklist columns for some records.  The data is visible in Planner but is being dropped in the export.  Also, the records with missing data is different each time I run the export.  I'm using the data to create dashboards in Power BI but it's useless with inconsistent data in the exports.

Copper Contributor

Excited about this feature!

Export was something we'd only considered after we'd built our Planner out quite a bit.

 

Only question we're struggling with; during that export process, how can you include a reference to an image/attachment?

The image/attachments are stored in the Shared Documents section of the SharePoint page, but they don't include a reference to the Planner task they are associated with.

How do we create a relationship between the image and the Planner task?

Copper Contributor

When will this be available to GCC users also?

Deleted
Not applicable

When will the Planner to Excel export issue be fixed? Exporting to Excel is incomplete due to missing Description or Action Steps. Confirmed "Show on Card" is checked for all in Planner. Is there currently a workaround for this issue? Thank you.

Copper Contributor

:(

If you are making us export to excel for simple tasks (like finding recently finished tasks), at least spend some time to make the export work correctly. It does not export dates correctly, making it an ardous task simply to find recently "done" tasks. I must 1) export to excel, 2) fix each and every date cell so its recognized as a date and not as text. 3) apply the filter on the date columns I want. All these because in Planner the "done" sections are not sorted by done date.

Microsoft

I thought it worth sharing one of our MVPs blog posts on taking the export to Excel feature a step further - with a Power BI template to read the exported plans and consolidate - https://applepark.co.uk/powerbi-planner-template/  

Copper Contributor

Description data is only exported for some tasks. Not always for the same tasks so there is also no logic. Sometimes 10 out of 1000 tasks have description exported, sometimes 30, ... Although all 1000 tasks have a description filled in. As long as this is missing it is not usable! Can you fix this??

Copper Contributor

Data export of the description field is incomplete in my exports to Excel. Like many others have reported here, this causes an incomplete data view that makes the export somewhat unusable. Hoping that this can be resolved soon. 

Copper Contributor

Is there a possibilty to have the comments exported too? I know it's 1 task to many comments but without the comments the export is quiet empty.

Brass Contributor

Can we have a flow (or whatever) to do automatic scheduled export the complete plan to excel , please?

Copper Contributor

I currently manage multiple planners and would like to be able to export all of them to Excel to have once complete look of all of my programs, is this a feature that will be rolled out as well?  Fingers Crossed! 

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‎May 28 2020 06:13 AM
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