On 30 September 2026 your project data is gone
Microsoft is retiring Project Online. Project plans, timesheets, the resource pool and every report built on them stop being reachable. What you have to secure before then, and which four paths are left.
The countdown has been running for a year
- 5 September 2025Microsoft announces the end of Project Online.
- 1 October 2025New Project Online-only licences are no longer available.
- 1 April 2026New Project Web App sites can no longer be created.
- 30 September 2026Access ends. No more exports, no way back.
What exactly disappears
This affects Project Online, the cloud edition with Project Web App. Not affected: Project Professional on the desktop and Project Server Subscription Edition in your own data centre.
Whatever you have not exported by the cut-off cannot be reconstructed afterwards. Not even through support.
- project plans, tasks, assignments and baselines across all PWA sites
- the enterprise resource pool and its master data
- time tracking and timesheets including approval history
- enterprise custom fields and their lookup tables
- the OData reporting feed, and with it every Power BI and Excel report that reads from it
- the SharePoint project sites with documents, risks, issues and deliverables
We compare the paths that do not lead to us, too
This page is a working aid first. The three Microsoft routes are held to the same questions as a change of vendor, because a decision you regret in two years is worth nothing to us. Our own offer sits at the end, in three paragraphs.
Secure first, decide second
Choosing a tool may take until October. Securing your data may not. Three routes that complement each other: none replaces the others.
Save project plans as files
File, Save As, Save As File. The result holds tasks, dependencies, baselines, assignments and the values of your enterprise custom fields.
- MS Project XML: open format, readable by most third-party systems
- .mpp: compact, for the way back into Project desktop
- When in doubt save both, it only costs disk space
Extract the reporting feed
Everything that does not fit into a single project plan lives under /_api/ProjectData. Pull it out as tables and keep CSV copies as well, regardless of where you move later.
- time tracking and timesheets including history
- resource pool and cross-project assignments
- field values across the entire portfolio
- project-level financials
Back up the SharePoint project sites
Documents, risks, issues and deliverables do not live in the project plan but in the sites beside it. They need a backup run of their own.
- document libraries per project site
- risk and issue lists
- project deliverables and attachments
The mistake that only surfaces in the new system
With enterprise custom fields the values travel, the definitions do not. Field values sit in the plan file. Name, type, lookup values and formulas live at tenant level and no export captures them. Miss this and your target system ends up with columns full of numbers nobody can interpret.
Document your field definitions separately before you export, together with the reports that depend on them.
The schedule, worked backwards
From today to the retirement. The final reconciliation belongs two weeks before the cut-off, not on it.
| By when | What |
|---|---|
| This week | Inventory: count active projects, count enterprise custom fields, check which reports depend on the OData feed. Run one export as a test |
| Mid-August | Full export of all projects, OData extract, field documentation |
| End of August | Target system decided, parallel operation started |
| 15 September | Final full export and reconciliation against the first: what has changed since? |
| 30 September | Retirement. No access, no way back |
Reading this late? Then in this order: export the plans, OData extract, field documentation, SharePoint. Everything else can wait.
The four paths and what they cost you
Which one fits comes down to a single question: did you use Project Online as a scheduling tool, or as a portfolio, resource and time-tracking system?
Microsoft Planner Premium
Microsoft’s own successor, formerly „Project for the web“, included in „Planner and Project Plan 3“ and „Plan 5“. Brings portfolios, baselines, dependencies and Gantt, and is closely tied to Teams and Copilot. A fit if your usage was essentially scheduling and collaboration and you want to stay in the Microsoft world. The move lands on a different data model: a fresh setup with data brought across, not a copy operation.
- How are your timesheets with an approval route handled?
- What becomes of the enterprise resource pool and workload across all projects?
- How many of your enterprise custom fields can be mapped, and at what effort?
- Every Power BI report on the OData feed gets rebuilt. How many are there?
- What do licences cost at your user count compared with today?
Project Server Subscription Edition
The same PWA world, run in your own data centre. A fit if you want to keep the familiar feature set unchanged, the data has to stay in-house and you can run the servers.
- Operational effort including the SharePoint Server foundation
- Licence and infrastructure cost compared with today
- The reason for the retirement was the legacy architecture. Here you keep running it yourself: for how long?
Dynamics 365 Project Operations
Projects, resources, invoicing and finance in one ERP context. A fit if your project business is billing-driven and project data should grow together with finance.
- This is an ERP programme, not a tool change, with the rollout effort to match
- Consulting need and project duration relative to the actual goal
- As a pure replacement for Project Online, oversized in most cases
Change vendor
A forced move is the cheapest moment for an honest reassessment, because the migration cost is incurred either way. A fit if you were dissatisfied anyway, if data has to stay in-house, or if the questions under path 1 come out badly.
- Does the system read .mpp and MS Project XML including dependencies and assignments? Insist on a test import with your own file, not a sample
- Can your enterprise custom fields be mapped?
- Is there time tracking with an approval route?
- Is there a workload view across all projects?
- Who rebuilds your reports, and how many are already in the standard product?
- Operating model: cloud, managed hosting or your own data centre?
Six questions that sort faster than any feature matrix
Answer these six before you call the first vendor. Two of the four paths usually drop out by themselves afterwards.
Do you record time with an approval route?
Usually the hardest requirement, and the one replacements fail most often.
Do you plan capacity across all projects?
An enterprise resource pool is a different thing from an assignment inside a single plan.
How many enterprise custom fields do you have?
Count them. That number drives migration effort more than the number of projects does.
How many reports read from the OData feed?
Every one gets rebuilt, wherever you move. It is the single largest item.
Are there rules on where the data runs?
Data protection officers, IT security, funding bodies or procurement often draw hard lines here.
How large is your estate really?
Twenty projects and eight planners is a different undertaking from four hundred projects and three hundred users.
Frequently asked questions
What we are asked most often about the retirement.
Do not bet on it. Sales ended in October 2025, and since April 2026 no new Project Web App sites can be created. The retirement has been running in stages for months. Secure your data regardless: the export costs you a day, betting on an extension can cost you the estate.
No. The Project Web App sites and their data are no longer available and the reporting feed stops responding. Whatever was not exported by then is lost.
No. This is about the cloud edition with Project Web App. The desktop application and Project Server Subscription Edition continue to run.
Export the active project plans anyway. It costs an hour and saves you the question, two years from now, of where that schedule went.
Twenty to fifty projects without exotic fields: two to four weeks including verification and parallel operation. With many enterprise custom fields, timesheet history and a grown reporting landscape, considerably longer. There, rebuilding the reports is the large item, not moving the data.
Yes. Export a plan from Project Online and upload it into a trial account. A test import with your own file answers more questions in ten minutes than any feature list, and you see immediately what arrives and what does not.
Statements about Microsoft products follow publicly available vendor information. Dates and licence names may change, Microsoft’s own announcement prevails.