Microsoft Planner is often used for recurring projects, team processes, onboarding tasks, event planning, and department workflows. Many teams get to the end of a project and then assume they need to recreate the entire Planner structure for the next rollout. Instead of rebuilding the same buckets, tasks, due dates, labels, and checklists from scratch every time, Planner allows you to duplicate an existing plan and use it as a starting point for your next project.
Duplicating a plan can save a huge amount of time, especially for organisations that follow the same process repeatedly. For example, schools may duplicate excursion planning templates, HR teams may reuse onboarding plans, and project managers can standardise project workflows across multiple teams.
When you duplicate a Microsoft Planner plan, several parts of the original plan can be copied across, including:
- Tasks
- Buckets
- Priority settings
- Labels
- Checklists
- Task descriptions
- Attachments
- Assigned team members
- Due dates
This flexibility lets you choose exactly what information should carry over into the new plan. For example, you might keep the task structure but remove due dates and assignments so the plan is ready for a fresh project cycle.
Duplicate a Plan
- Open a web browser and go to https://planner.cloud.microsoft/.
- Login using your Microsoft 365 username and password.
- The Microsoft Planner window will appear along with access to My day, My tasks and My plans plus any Pinned plans.
- Select My plans and open the plan you wish to duplicate.
- Click the ellipsis (…) button next to the plan name:
- From the menu, choose Duplicate plan.
- The Duplicate plan window will appear.
- Here you can choose which parts of the plan you wish to include in the copied version.
- Firstly give the duplicated plan a New plan name.
- Next choose if you want to add the duplicated plan to a Microsoft 365 group, this is optional.
- Under the Choose which task fields to copy, untick or tick the options you wish to copy from the original plan.
- Click Duplicate.
- A copy will now be made of the Plan.
- Go to My plans in the sidebar to see the new plan appear under the new name you gave it.
- Open the duplicate plan to view the tasks.
Tips when duplicating a Plan
Best Practices for Duplicating Plans
I’m often asked if it is possible to create a plan to use as a “template”. Unfortunately there is no formal “template” feature (yet) in Planner however you can keep a master copy of a Plan, complete with buckets and tasks created. You can then treat the master plan as a template. Keep one clean version that can be reused whenever needed simply by creating a duplicated copy from it.
Another helpful tip is to use clear naming conventions, such as:
- Marketing Campaign Template
- Weekly Operations Plan
- Staff Onboarding Template
This makes it easier for teams to identify which plans are templates and which are active projects.
Can You Duplicate a Planner Plan from within Teams?
If your Planner plan is connected to a Microsoft Teams team, you can still duplicate the plan using the same process. It’s important to understand that copying the plan does not duplicate the entire Team or its channels. Only the Planner plan itself is duplicated.
Duplicating a plan in Microsoft Planner is a simple and powerful way to improve productivity and maintain consistency across projects. Please leave any questions below or be sure to check out my other Planner tips.
Summary
So now you know how easy it is to duplicate, or copy an existing plan in Microsoft Planner. Feel free to comment below with any questions or check out some of my other Planner tips and tricks.