Comment on tasks in Microsoft Planner

What is Task chat? 

Task chat lets you send messages, mention teammates, and coordinate work directly within a task. Messages are visible only to people who have access to the task. 

Use Task chat to: 

• Ask questions or share updates about a task

• Mention someone to get their attention

• Keep discussions connected to the task they relate to

Start and use Task chat 

Each task has a single chat thread. 

• If a task doesn’t have a chat yet, the first message you add starts the chat.

• If a task already has a chat, you can add new messages at any time.

• Messages in Task chat appear in chronological order.

Mention teammates in task chat 

Mentions help ensure the right people see updates without notifying everyone in the plan. To use them, type @ followed by a person’s name to mention them. 

You can mention any person who has access to the plan. You can mention multiple people in a single message, and mentioned users receive both an email and Teams notification so they can respond quickly. 

What you can do in Task chat 

Task chat supports rich, modern messaging features, including: 

• Rich text formatting (bold, lists, links, headings)

• Emoji reactions to messages

• Edit or delete messages you wrote

Edits are clearly marked so others know a message was updated. Deleted messages leave a placeholder indicating removal. 

Access and permissions 

To view or participate in a task chat, you must have access to the task. 

• If you can open the task, you can view its chat.

• Only the creator of a message can edit or delete that message.

• Guest users who have access to a task can participate in task chat.

Working with existing comments and conversations 

If a task already has legacy task comments, you’ll see a link to open the comment thread in Outlook.  

New messages are added only through task chat. Existing threads remain accessible so you don’t lose past context. 

Add a comment to a task

For Basic plans, select a task to bring up its details, and then use the Comments box to have discussions with your team. Select Send when you're ready to post the comment.

After a comment is added, the task shows a comment symbol to give the team a heads-up that there's something new to read.

Comments are shown in the task with the most recent comment at the top.

For tasks in Premium plans, pin the plan to a Teams channel using the Project app in Teams and use Teams conversations for tasks to discuss the task.

Who gets notified about my comment?

For tasks in Basic plans, your comment is sent to:

• Your plan's Microsoft 365 Group. You can see it along with all the conversations going on for all tasks in your plan. In Outlook, select the three dots next to your plan's name, and then choose Conversation. From there, you can see comments for all of the plan's tasks in Outlook on the web. You can also use the Outlook Groups app to view conversations about your plan. Learn more about conversations in Microsoft 365 Groups in Outlook.

• Anyone who has already commented on the task. Email notifications for comments don't automatically get sent to the task owner, and @-mentions are not currently supported. For more details, see Manage Planner notifications.

  Tip: If you want to modify who receives task comment email notifications for a specific task, see Reset who receives email notifications on comments for a specific task

For tasks in Premium plans, refer to Teams conversations for tasks.

Why can't I see or add task comments?

For tasks in Basic plans, there are a few reasons you might not be able to see or add task comments:

• If you paste into the Comment field from an email message including, "From:" and "Sent:" fields, your comment will look like it has been saved, but everything after and including those fields will not appear the next time the task is opened. This is because Exchange handles these fields as a forward or reply, and treats them differently than normal text. To work around this issue:

  • For short emails, remove the "From:" and "Sent:" fields from your comment before choosing Send.

  • For long emails with many "From:" and "Sent:" fields, consider adding the email to the task as an attachment and referring to it from the comments.

• If your organization is not using Exchange Online for your account, you may not be able to comment on tasks in Planner.

• You can't add comments to Planner tasks in plans that are created by Connected Yammer Groups.

• If a thread gets forked, then not all comments will load. Forking can occur by a direct response to an e-mail in the group inbox rather than via comments in Planner tasks. Forking can also automatically occur when more than 100 comments are added to a task.

For tasks in Premium plans, refer to Teams conversations for tasks.

Provide feedback on Planner

Your feedback helps us decide what to work on next. If you have a feature you'd like to request, please send us your feedback to help us prioritize new features in future updates. See How do I give feedback on Microsoft Office? for more information.