A common Microsoft 365 workflow starts with a simple question:
How do I get an Outlook email into Microsoft Planner?
There are several possible answers, depending on what “into Planner” means.
You may only need a personal reminder. You may want an automated process that handles every matching email the same way. Or you may need to review each message and decide where the resulting Planner task belongs.
The main options are:
- Flag the email.
- Manually create a Planner task.
- Build a Power Automate flow.
- Use an Outlook add-in such as Send to Planner.
Flagging the Outlook Email
The easiest native option is to flag the message in Outlook.
Flagged emails can appear in Microsoft To Do and within the task views available through the newer Microsoft Planner experience. This works well when the goal is simply to remind yourself to return to a message.
However, flagging does not create a normal task in a selected Planner plan.
You cannot use the flag itself to choose:
- A shared Planner plan
- A bucket
- An assignee
- Start and due dates
- Selected portions of the email
- Specific attachments
Flagging is therefore best suited to personal follow-up rather than team task management.
Manually Creating the Planner Task
The next option is to open Planner and create the task manually.
This gives you full control, but it also means moving between Outlook and Planner and copying the relevant information yourself.
Depending on the email, that may include:
- Rewriting the subject as a task title
- Copying part of the message body
- Saving and uploading attachments
- Assigning the task
- Selecting a bucket
- Adding dates
- Preserving a reference to the original email
Manual entry is reasonable when this only happens occasionally. It becomes repetitive when email is a regular source of work.
Using Power Automate
Power Automate is often the first recommendation for connecting Outlook and Planner.
A flow can create a Planner task when an email:
- Arrives from a particular sender
- Contains certain text
- Is moved into a folder
- Is assigned a category
- Meets other predefined conditions
This is a good solution when the workflow is consistent.
For example, if every message sent to a particular mailbox should create a task in the same plan and bucket, Power Automate may be the correct tool.
The challenge is that many email-to-task decisions are not consistent.
One email may need to go to an operations plan. The next may belong to a customer project. Another may only require one paragraph from a long thread. Some attachments may be useful while others are signatures, logos, or unrelated files.
The user may need to decide, for each message:
- Which plan to use
- Which bucket to use
- Who should be assigned
- What the task title should be
- Which part of the message to include
- Which attachments to include
- Whether a start or due date is needed
- Whether the message came from a personal or shared mailbox
Power Automate can support sophisticated workflows, but an interactive process with many optional decisions can require a substantial amount of configuration.
At that point, the flow is no longer simply “when an email arrives, create a task.”
It becomes a small application.
Why I Built Send to Planner
I originally built Send to Planner because I regularly encountered emails that needed to become Planner tasks, but they did not all follow the same rule.
The problem was not merely creating the task. The problem was deciding what the task should contain and where it should go.
Send to Planner is an Outlook add-in that lets the user make those decisions while viewing the email.
The user can select options such as:
- Planner plan
- Bucket
- Task title
- Assignee
- Start date
- Due date
- Email body content
- Attachments
- A reference to the original message
This makes it possible to create a complete Planner task without moving back and forth between Outlook and Planner.
| Email message fidelity | All attachments and email as PDF |
 |  |
It also avoids forcing every email through the same predefined automation.
Choosing the Right Approach
Each method has a valid use case.
| Method | Best suited for |
|---|---|
| Flagging | Personal reminders and follow-up |
| Manual entry | Occasional task creation |
| Power Automate | Repetitive workflows with consistent rules |
| Send to Planner | Interactive task creation where each email may be different |
The question is not whether Power Automate or an Outlook add-in is universally better.
The better question is:
Does the same rule apply to every email?
When the answer is yes, Power Automate is often a strong solution.
When the answer is no, an interactive Outlook add-in may be more practical.
Security and Microsoft 365 Administration
Third-party Outlook add-ins may require approval from a Microsoft 365 administrator, especially in managed organizational environments.
That is a reasonable concern.
The Send to Planner product page includes information covering:
- Requested Microsoft permissions
- Data access
- Data flow
- Privacy
- Security
- Administrative deployment
Send to Planner is also going through the Microsoft 365 App Certification process.
Certification is not a substitute for an organization’s own security review, but it provides an additional level of independent validation. I am also willing to work directly with Microsoft 365 administrators or security teams that need more information before approving the add-in.
Learn More
For a detailed comparison of the available methods, including flagged email, manual task creation, Power Automate, and Send to Planner, see:
How to Get an Outlook Email into Microsoft Planner
For product details, features, security information, and installation options, see:
Send to Planner for Microsoft Outlook
The complete user guide is also available here:
The online versions of Office are only there to provide an additional avenues to access Office from anywhere, on any device. Per the Office 365 website:
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