How to import tasks from Excel into Planner

With the popularity of Microsoft Planner continuing to go up, I often have people ask me how they can get a list of tasks which have been tracked using Excel, and move them into Microsoft Planner without the need to create them manually one-by-one. Whilst Planner doesn’t directly give us an import function, Power Automate provides a way that we can “trigger” tasks to be created based on an Excel file.

If you have never used Power Automate before, don’t panic, I’m going to step you through this process to make this as painfree as possible.

Set up the Excel file

The first thing we need to do is prepare the Excel file so that it will work with Power Automate to create each task in Planner. The Excel file will need to have some specific pieces of information in order for the process to work. Ultimately Power Automate needs to know which pieces of information from Excel will need to go into specific fields in Microsoft Planner.

1. Open Microsoft Excel and open the file which contains the list of tasks you want to put into Planner.
2. Edit the column headings to match fields that Planner needs such as Task Name, Bucket Name, Start Date, Due Date, Description (Notes in Planner), Assigned To etc:

3. You do not have to include all of these columns in the Excel file. At the minimum you need to have Task Name. The rest can be left out if you do not have the data in the worksheet.
4. Next you must convert the data to a Table range. To do this, place the cursor on a cell within the data area.
5. From the Home tab, click Format as Table.
6. Choose a format from the styling options.
7. Be sure to make sure the My table has headers option is selected so that Excel knows the first row has the column headings:

8. Click OK.
9. The data is now formatted as a Table.
10. Now save the file to your OneDrive. The file must be saved to the cloud for Power Automate to access it.
11. Close the workbook.

Create a new Plan

Now that you have the Excel file set up, you will need to have or create a Plan that you will then import the tasks into. You may already have a Plan set up in Microsoft Teams that you wish to use, or you can create a new one from scratch. If you are not sure how to create a new Plan, check out this post that will step you through how to create a Plan.

TIP: The process we are using here with Power Automate generally will only work when importing into a Basic Plan. If you are wanting to import into an existing Premium Plan, you have to use a different connector in Power Automate. If you want the Plan to use the Premium Plan features, import first into a Basic Plan, then upgrade it to a Premium Plan AFTER you have imported the tasks.

To learn more about how to add or remove members from a Plan in Microsoft Planner, check out my post.

Set up Power Automate

Now that you have the Excel file set up and ready to go, we can now go to Power Automate to have it automatically create a task in Planner from each row of data in the Excel file.

1. Go to the Microsoft 365 portal at https://m365.cloud.microsoft/.
2. Log in with your Microsoft 365 username and password if prompted.
3. From the sidebar, choose Apps then click All apps.
4. Locate and click Power Automate.
5. The Power Automate interface will appear:

6. From the sidebar, click Create.
7. Now choose Instant cloud flow.
8. The Build an instant cloud flow window will appear:

9. Next you will need to enter a Flow name. Give it a descriptive name so you know what it is later down the track.
10. Next you need to choose a trigger, from this select Manually trigger a flow because we are going to tell it when to perform this flow rather than it being triggered automatically.
11. Create Create.
12. The flow will now be displayed ready for you to configure:

13. Click the + icon to insert a new action.
14. The first action is going to be having Power Automate read the data in the Excel file.
15. From the Search for an action field, type Excel till you see the list of Excel Online (Business) options appear:

NOTE: It’s important to know that if you are using a work-based Microsoft 365 account then you’ll need to use Excel Online (Business). If you have a personal Microsoft 365 account then there is a Excel Online (OneDrive) option which is for personal accounts. Make sure you choose the correct option.

16. We need to find the action called List rows present in a table, if you do not see it, click See more dispalyed on the right side of the Excel Online (Business) heading. Select the action.
17. The details for this action will now appear:

18. Click in the Location field and select OneDrive for Business.
19. Click in the Document Library field and select OneDrive.
20. From the File field, click the Folder icon on the right side which will allow you to browse your OneDrive files using the folder icons.
21. Locate and select the Excel file.
22. Click in the Table field and a list of Tables in the file will be displayed. By default if you only have 1 x table in the file it will be called Table1.
23. Click Save.

Test the Flow

Now that you have set up the first part of the Power Automate Flow, it is a good idea to test it to make sure Power Automate can successfully complete the first step in the process.

1. Click Test from the toolbar.
2. Choose Manually.
3. Click Test.
4. Click Run flow.
5. Click Done.
6. You should see a message stating Your flow ran successfully.
7. This let’s you know that the first part if working and you can now move to create the next action.

Add another Action

1. If you have tested the flow, it then leaves the Edit view.
2. To add another action, click Edit in the top right corner then click the + icon to insert a new action.
3. From the Search for an action field, type Planner till you see the list of Planner options appear:

4. Select the Create a task action.
5. Click in the Group Id field and choose the name of the Microsoft Group/Team that has the Plan you wish to use.
6. Click in the Plan Id field and choose the name of the Plan you want to import the tasks to.
7. Click in the Title field. This field is where we are going to get Power Automate to grab the name of the task from our Excel file.
8. In the Title field, type the forward slash (/) and choose Insert dynamic content.
9. A list of the column headings from the Excel file will appear. If you don’t see the ones you created such as Task Name, Start date etc, click the See more option:

10. Choose the field for Task Name.
11. Look to the Advanced parameters heading and click Show all.
12. To specify which Bucket to place each task, click the Bucket Id field and choose Enter custom value.
13. Type the forward slash (/) and choose Insert dynamic content.
14. From the list of column headings in the Excel file click the See more option.
15. Now select the field that lists which Bucket each task is assigned to.
16. Repeat the same process with the Advanced parameter fields for Start Date Time and Due Date Time if applicable for your data.
17. Click Save to save your changes.

Run the Power Automate Flow

Now that each action has been created, we can go ahead and run the flow to have Power Automate automatically create a task from each row in the Excel file.

1. Now that everything has been set, click the Back button in the top left corner.
2. A message will appear saying your Flow is ready to run when triggered.
3. From the toolbar, click Run.
4. Make sure a green tick appears next to both Excel Online (Business) and Planner to show that you are signed in to both platforms.
5. Click Continue.
6. Click Run Flow.
7. You should see a message stating Your flow ran successfully:

8. Click Done.
9. Now go to Microsoft Planner and open the Plan.
10. Check to make sure all the Tasks have been created.
11. Congratulations, you have imported tasks from an Excel file into a Plan.
12. You can now drag and drop the tasks into any buckets within the Plan.

I hope this helps to make this process easier. Even though it requires a little bit of set up, it will make this process much easier when dealing with a large number of tasks needing to move from Excel to Microsoft Planner. Comment below with any questions.