Copy tasks between Plans in Planner
Published May 14 2018 01:27 PM 47.1K Views

Hello!

 

This may be a controversial stance, but, I actually love Mondays. It's a chance to start fresh, get organized, and set new goals! My Monday morning routine always consists of: coffee, sorting through emails, and organizing my Planner Plans. In that order. 

 

I've got a few favorite Plans that I'm constantly switching between. Of course, the work contained in each isn't perfectly separate and often overlaps. For instance, I have a new idea so I create a task in my 'Ideas' board. Let's say, every time someone completes a task, a little dinosaur pops out of the corner and eats the task.

 

Dinosaur eating Planner-01.png

 

I add details to that task, and soon it's ready to become a work item to collaborate on! Until now, I've needed to manually copy over my tasks. Two windows, copy/paste, that kind of thing. Now that I can chose which plan (and bucket) I want a copy of my task to land in, I can send it over to the right place. Now my dinosaur idea has a beautiful spot on my 'Feature Wish List' board!

 

Copy task dialogue.JPGWe'll be exploring and expanding the ways in which you and your team can organize work in Planner, and hope this will be a helpful step forward. Here's an article to learn more about this feature: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=872349

 

Let us know what you think below!

 

Cheers, 

Jo

24 Comments

Thx for the  enhancement . It will be  really useful.

waiting for the day  when i can sync planner tasks  with outlook!!

Copper Contributor

This is great but i really wish it would copy comments too. There doesn't seem to be a way to copy comments between different tasks. This is unfortunate when a task gets corrupted like one i am dealing with now.

 

In the future i will want to copy a range of tasks to different planners in different teamsites due to splitting up some work and being able to carry over historical comments would be fantastic. copy and pasting isn't as readable.

Steel Contributor

Nice

Copper Contributor
Very handy! Thank you!
Brass Contributor

Great feature! Now I can create template tasks and copy them to other boards. 

Wish you also would add a move feature between plans

Brass Contributor

Great progress, but anxiously awaiting the ability to have either template plans or the ability to simulate templates by copying an entire planner board. Our launch checklist for a new client, for instance, is well over 100 tasks (and countless subtasks). For now, that means continuing to use Basecamp...

Copper Contributor

Hello I have noticed when I use an existing plan that it has a direct link to the planner I copied so anything i change will effect all plans. When will there be a copy planner function that will be unlinked to the plan being copied.  PS love the functionality but badly need the copy plan function as I have over 100 standard tasks for every project.  

Thanks for the feedback! 

 

We are working on providing the ability to copy plans as a next step from Copy task to another plan. You can view our progress/updates on our UserVoice thread here: https://planner.uservoice.com/forums/330525-microsoft-planner-feedback-forum/suggestions/14744172-ab...

 

-Joanna Parkhurst

Copper Contributor

This is amazing! Thank you. I love the copy task feature! I am struggling with the planner now that we are actively using this tool as part of our project planning workflow. To give you an example, our team has a sprint planning board + project boards. I would like to either move the task from the project board to the sprint (along with all of the contents on the card) or have that same content exist in both places. It would be great for those tasks to sync. Right now if I update a task within my sprint, it doesn't update on the project board. The reason I am keeping it separate is because I would like to measure project success through the schedule and chart for each specific project. Right now, there aren't tags. So if I add it to the sprint board, then I will be able to measure it within the sprint but not look at the project as a whole.  Thank you for listening!

Copper Contributor

Awesome. However it would be even better if the tasks would be synced between different plans. I would love to as a manager create task in Overview Plan, and then move it to specific team plan like Software Plan or Mechanical Plan but also still be able to track the progress from the Overview Plan.

 

It would be also awesome if it would be possible to export data from planner for monthly progress report. 

Copper Contributor

Can we link a Planner to multiple sites? I definitely see a permissions issue - Team A and Team B may have different team members, with some common lot. So not sure if its possible?

Copper Contributor

Would love the ability to copy an entire planner from a template to a new plan or the ability to select all buckets and task. But this is awesome!

Copper Contributor

Yes, I agree with the above comments about copying entire set of planning tasks. I use this for the same or similar events year after year and now that I'm into my second year of tinkering with Teams/Planner, I want to just recreate the same tasks and then go in and update deadlines and assignments. But not copy task by task.

@acmsidaho - have you considered using Copy plan for this scenario? Here's more info on that feature: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/copy-a-plan-50401e13-a25f-40df-93c6-b608cc28c3d4

Copper Contributor

@Joanna Parkhurst Thank you for pointing out that feature. I had not seen that as I typically use the desktop version and that option does not show up except in the web browser version. It could be useful but still isn't as flexible as I need it to be.

 

In my situation, I want to copy one event (Winter Clinics 2019 bucket) into an existing team (Winter Clinics 2020) rather than creating a copy of all 2019 buckets/tasks for 2020 purposes. I can't do that unless I copy all the event planning buckets and then delete the extraneous buckets/tasks I won't use for this purpose. And I have an existing team to copy it into and I can't do that except task by task.

 

What would be userful is if I could copy a single bucket with all its tasks into a different team.

teams.png

@acmsidaho I see - so you're looking for a copy bucket capability. Thanks for the feedback! 

Copper Contributor
To add on to the single bucket different teams, it would be nice to actually be able to copy plans to different channels without them still being joined. If I use an existing plan then that plan is now joined to 2 different channels where if it's updated in one, it's updated in the other. This is great for multiple teams with the same plan but I have a single team with multiple plans. These core elements of these plans are all the same except they need to be completed individually at different locations.

@SElrod72 - When you add a plan to multiple channels, it's the same plan - not a copy. If you go to Planner web (tasks.office.com) and copy the plan you'll have two separate copies. Does that make sense? 

 

More info on copy plan here: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/copy-a-plan-50401e13-a25f-40df-93c6-b608cc28c3d4

Copper Contributor
@Joanna Parkhurst - This is very helpful information, thank you for sharing. It appears that this new plan is only available via the web interface and not in the Desktop App. Is there any way to view this in the Desktop App other than creating a website link in a tab? I'm trying to keep this is as simple as possible to avoid users having to got to multiple different locations or having multiple different views. Thanks

@SElrod72 - When you create a new copy of a plan, it creates a new Office 365 Group/Team for that team. You can view it in the Teams app by adding that new group as a Team - otherwise, you cannot add it to an existing Team through the Planner tab.

 

We're working on enabling users to copy a plan to an existing group, which would then allow you to do this.

Copper Contributor

hola,

estoy con un problema y ya busquei solucion pero no miro nadie.

Havia hecho un nuevo Canal. Depois empezei un nuevo Planner y mirei que podia utilizar un Planner ya existente de otro Canal y pensei que era genial por que la estrutura seria la misma.

Hoy mirei que todos los cambios que yo havia hecho en Planner del nuevo canal se refletiron en Planner que havia hecho copia.

Que passa, es que en nuevo canal borrei contenido e esso tambien se ha passado en otro canal y no lo queria esso de todo. 

Hay fuerma de hacer undo a los cambios o todavia mirar un historico para poder copiar a la mano todo lo que necessito?

Ahora mismo tengo 2 canales con nombre diferentes pero con lo mismo contenido y nos es esso que yo necessito y sen hablar que borrei informacion del primeiro canal que es mui important y trabajo de dias. 

Copper Contributor

My workaround for copying Planner content is to create a tab for it in Teams. There you can copy content using control C.

Copper Contributor

We've implemented an Agile Process that utilizes 3 boards. An Epic, Current and Archive. The Archive Board allows us to store all past tasks in a single place--our archive buckets are named by cycle. We need to move all content related to a task, or we need to find a better solution. Is anyone running more than five teams with a 7 to 14 day cycle? How are you handling closed tasks?

Copper Contributor

Through this, is there a way to link tasks that are from different planners? When I say link- when edits are made from Task 1 in Planner 1 it will also get reflected on Task 2 in Planner 2.

Version history
Last update:
‎May 14 2018 01:29 PM
Updated by: