← Al Davies, 250 High Street

Project Online is retired: what a small team can use instead

Short answer: Project Online retired on September 30, 2026, the date Microsoft's Project Online documentation gives. For a small team that tracks tasks and dates, a forum reply on Microsoft Q&A, from a moderator labeled Microsoft External Staff, points to Planner premium plans. A SharePoint list is the other route when you only need rows, owners and dates.

What Microsoft's pages say about the retirement

That date has passed. For what it means for your own tenant, read Microsoft's announcement and ask your admin.

Step 1. Get your data out first

Before the retirement date, a forum reply on Microsoft Q&A, from a moderator labeled Microsoft External Staff, told teams to "Export and archive Project Online data before September 30, 2026." If your team did that, start from the archive.

Ask your admin whether an archive was taken. If you cannot reach your data, ask your admin to contact Microsoft support.

Option A. Planner premium plans

The same forum reply gave this plan for project work:

  1. "Validate licensing (Planner Plan 1 / Plan 3 / Plan 5)."
  2. "Configure Planner Premium for project execution: Gantt / Timeline view, Dependencies within a single plan, Baselines, Sprints, People view."
  3. "Set up Portfolios in Planner (replacing Roadmaps)."

Microsoft's page "License Options for Microsoft Copilot" lists Planner and Project plans in its table as "Microsoft Project and Planner Plan 5," "Microsoft Project and Planner Plan 3," and "Microsoft Planner Plan 1, formerly Project Plan 1." That gives you the names as Microsoft writes them.

For how the plans differ, see "Planner premium vs basic for a small team" and "Planner task dependencies on the basic plan".

Option B. A SharePoint list tracker

Our advice, not a Microsoft rule: if your team has a handful of projects and uses Project Online only to hold tasks, owners and due dates, a list can do that job. Project Online itself stores data in SharePoint, per Microsoft's service description above, so the idea is not far from where you are.

Columns to create in the list:

  1. Title, for the task name.
  2. Project, a Choice column with the project names.
  3. Owner, a Person column.
  4. Start date and Due date, both Date columns.
  5. Status, a Choice column with numbered values: 1 Not started, 2 In progress, 3 Blocked, 4 Done.
  6. Notes, a multiple lines of text column.

Then make three views: all tasks sorted by Due date, a Blocked view filtered on Status, and a view grouped by Project. For the setup, see "SharePoint list sort by more than one column", "Highlight overdue rows in a SharePoint list" and "Set up a RAID log in a SharePoint list".

A list does not draw a Gantt chart or compute a critical path. If you need those, Option A is the closer fit. Microsoft's service description lists Gantt view, critical path, baselines and timesheets as Project Online features. A plain list has none of them.

Which one fits

For a side-by-side of the two tools, see "Planner vs a SharePoint list". To bring spreadsheet data in, see "Import Excel into an existing SharePoint list".

If a flow ran on Project Online data

Microsoft's service description says Power Automate use within Project "is limited to the context of the Project application." Any flow that read Project Online data needs a new source. Point it at the new list or plan, then test. If the flow acts on new rows, add a Yes/No column with a default value of No. The flow checks it is No, acts, then sets it to Yes.

When to get help

You can build all of this yourself in Microsoft 365. If you would rather have it built and tested for your team, I do that. A tracker like this is a fixed price: $5,000 for one, built in 2 weeks. See "What a SharePoint tracker costs to build". Bring one example of the problem to a free call.

Tell me what's still manual

I am Al Davies. I run 250 High Street LLC and build SharePoint trackers and Power Automate flows for operations teams. I work remotely. The first call is free, and I will not try to sell you anything.

See trackers I built: Tools I built

FAQ

When did Project Online retire?

On September 30, 2026. Microsoft's Project Online Admin Documentation gives that date.

What replaces Project Online?

A forum reply on Microsoft Q&A, from a moderator labeled Microsoft External Staff, points to Planner premium plans, with Portfolios in Planner "replacing Roadmaps."

Is there a Project Online extension?

Microsoft's Learn pages give September 30, 2026 and no later date. Ask your admin or Microsoft support about your tenant.

Can a SharePoint list replace Project Online for a small team?

For tasks, owners and dates, yes. It has no Gantt chart, critical path or baselines. The forum reply above lists Gantt / Timeline view and baselines among Planner premium features.

How long does Microsoft keep a Project Online instance after the plans end?

Microsoft's service description says that when your last Project Plan 3 or Project Plan 5 subscription expires, Project Online instances are deleted after 120 days.

Sources