12 Best Project Planning Templates for Excel &#038; AI-Powered Workflows (2025)

Starting a project without a clear plan is like trying to build a house without a blueprint. You might get a wall up, but the structure is likely to be unstable. Effective project management relies on a solid foundation, and that's where the right project planning templates come in. They provide the structure needed to define scope, allocate resources, set timelines, and track progress, preventing scope creep and ensuring everyone is aligned. This guide is designed to help you find the perfect template for your specific needs, focusing on powerful solutions for Excel and how artificial intelligence can enhance them.

We've curated a comprehensive list of the best platforms and resources for downloadable and customizable templates. Each entry includes a preview, a breakdown of key features, and practical use cases to help you visualize how it fits into your workflow. You'll find direct links to each resource, allowing you to get started immediately.

Beyond selecting the right templates, effective project communication and documentation are vital. This includes understanding a practical guide to meeting minutes format with action items to ensure all key decisions are recorded and tracked. This article will also show you how to leverage AI tools like Elyx.AI to customize and automate these templates, transforming them from static Excel documents into dynamic, intelligent project management assets.

1. Microsoft (Project and Excel templates)

Microsoft offers an extensive library of official project planning templates designed for users already working within the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. For teams committed to Excel, these native templates are the logical starting point, offering familiarity and seamless integration. You can find everything from simple task lists to complex Gantt charts, ensuring a low learning curve for creating and sharing project plans directly within your spreadsheets.

Why It's a Top Choice for Excel Users

The primary advantage is its native compatibility. There’s no need for third-party add-ins; the templates are free and ready to use within Excel. This makes it easy to share and collaborate on project plans with colleagues. For those who rely heavily on Excel's flexibility, exploring how to build or acquire more advanced options can be beneficial. Many resources provide guidance on creating detailed Excel project planner templates from scratch or by adapting existing files. With an AI tool, you can even ask it to generate formulas for progress tracking or automate status updates based on cell values.

Pros and Cons

Pros: Familiar Excel interface, no extra costs for Microsoft 365 subscribers, and direct integration with other Office apps.
Cons: Excel-based templates often require significant manual formula writing and adjustments for complex projects. Advanced features like resource leveling or critical path analysis are locked behind a paid Microsoft Project license.

Once your project is underway, keeping stakeholders informed is crucial. You can learn more about creating effective project status reports to ensure clear communication.

Website: Microsoft Project Planning Templates

2. Smartsheet Template Gallery

Smartsheet offers dozens of ready-to-use project planning templates that feel like Excel on steroids. Solutions like the "Simple Project Plan" or "Project Tracking & Rollup" are prebuilt with live sheets, reports, automations, and dashboards. This makes Smartsheet a great choice for teams seeking the familiar grid-style interface of a spreadsheet but with powerful, integrated project management features like Gantt timelines built-in.

Why It's a Top Choice

The key advantage is the speed of deployment. Instead of building complex formulas and charts from scratch in Excel, teams can launch a complete project solution with Gantt charts, variance tracking, and portfolio rollups in minutes. The templates are easily accessible within the app and designed for straightforward customization. This allows project managers to quickly adapt the tools to their specific needs without extensive setup, providing a structured yet flexible environment.

Pros and Cons

Pros: A fast start for PMs accustomed to Excel but needing more structure, and strong reporting and dashboarding capabilities out of the box.
Cons: The best value often requires a paid plan, as some premium template features and automations are locked behind higher-tier subscriptions or add-ons.

For those comparing different spreadsheet-based tools, it is helpful to explore the range of project management tools for Excel to find the best fit.

Website: Smartsheet Project Management Templates

3. Asana Templates

Asana offers a wide array of free and paid project planning templates designed for teams looking for a fast, consistent way to launch projects. These templates cover various functions, from marketing campaigns to design sprints, and come pre-populated with tasks, sections, and timelines. While Asana is a standalone platform, its powerful CSV import/export capabilities allow for seamless integration with Excel, enabling you to manage data in a spreadsheet and visualize it in Asana's user-friendly interface.

Why It's a Top Choice

Asana's key advantage is its low-friction setup, making it ideal for non-technical teams who need a robust system without a steep learning curve. The templates are more than just task lists; they are comprehensive frameworks built with specific use cases in mind. You can export project data to Excel for custom reporting or import a task list from a spreadsheet to instantly populate an Asana project, bridging the gap between both tools.

Pros and Cons

Pros: Highly intuitive for non-technical users, a generous free plan for basic task management, and excellent for enforcing project consistency.
Cons: Advanced features like Timeline views and automations are locked behind paid plans. Deep integration with Excel requires manual import/export steps.

Effective reporting is essential once a project is active, and you can find project management reporting templates to complement your Asana workflows.

Website: Asana Templates

4. monday.com Templates

monday.com provides a highly visual platform with a vast library of project planning templates. Designed for speed and collaboration, its templates allow teams to create fully functional project boards with just one click. While it's a standalone system, monday.com offers robust Excel import and export features, allowing teams to start with existing spreadsheet data and later export progress reports for deeper analysis or stakeholder review.

Why It's a Top Choice for Visual Planning

The platform excels at turning complex plans into clear, color-coded boards that are easy for anyone to understand. Its one-click setup gets projects moving in minutes, and built-in automations reduce manual work. For Excel users, the ability to import a project plan from a spreadsheet is a key feature, instantly transforming static rows into a dynamic, collaborative board. You can also export board data back to Excel to create custom charts or pivot tables.

Pros and Cons

Pros: Extremely fast setup and user-friendly visual interface. Offers a wide variety of project management templates and powerful automation capabilities.
Cons: Advanced features like portfolio management are locked behind higher-priced subscription tiers. It's a separate system, so it doesn't live inside Excel.

Website: monday.com Project Management Templates

5. ClickUp Template Center

ClickUp offers an extensive catalog of project planning templates that integrate docs, tasks, and Gantt charts into a single view. As an all-in-one work hub, it's suitable for teams wanting to consolidate their workflow. For Excel power users, ClickUp's CSV import/export functionality is crucial. You can prepare your project structure in Excel and import it to create a new project, or export data from ClickUp to perform advanced analysis and create custom reports in a spreadsheet.

Why It's a Top Choice

The key advantage is its unified ecosystem. ClickUp templates come pre-configured with custom fields and specific views (like Gantt boards), which ensures consistency. This structure can be exported to Excel, providing a well-organized dataset for reporting. Templates can be easily remapped with new dates, making them highly reusable for recurring projects, and are available across all plans, including the free tier.

Pros and Cons

Pros: Truly an all-in-one work hub, highly flexible for growing teams, and templates include rich metadata for immediate structure.
Cons: The platform's depth can present a significant learning curve. Using it effectively with Excel requires mastering the import/export process to avoid data mapping issues.

Website: ClickUp Template Center

6. Airtable Templates and Guides

Airtable blends the simplicity of a spreadsheet with the power of a database, offering a unique approach to project planning. Its official templates and guides are perfect for teams wanting a flexible, database-driven plan that still feels familiar to Excel users. Users can easily manage complex information with multiple views and a customizable schema that adapts to any workflow, and then export the data to CSV for traditional spreadsheet analysis.

Why It's a Top Choice

Airtable's strength lies in its incredible versatility. You can start with a project planning template and switch between Grid, Kanban, Timeline, Calendar, and Gantt views without losing data context. This visual flexibility is a major step up from a standard Excel sheet. For reporting, you can easily export specific views or entire tables to a CSV file, allowing for offline analysis or integration with other business intelligence tools that connect to Excel.

Pros and Cons

Pros: Highly customizable schema for complex programs, multiple data views, and a helpful gallery of official templates.
Cons: Requires more initial configuration than a dedicated project management tool. Advanced features like Gantt views are on paid tiers.

Website: Airtable Templates

7. Miro Template Library + Miroverse

Miro is an online collaborative whiteboard ideal for the visual brainstorming and strategic alignment phases of project planning. Its extensive library offers over 5,000 templates for project plans, trackers, and scopes. While not a spreadsheet tool, Miro is exceptional for creating visual project structures that can then be organized and exported as a CSV file to be imported into Excel, forming the foundation of a more detailed, task-driven plan.

Why It's a Top Choice

Miro excels where traditional spreadsheets fall short: collaborative, real-time visual planning. It's an exceptional tool for kickoff meetings and brainstorming sessions. The platform’s strength lies in turning abstract ideas into tangible visual plans. Once a plan is set, the ability to export sticky notes or tables to CSV allows a smooth handoff from high-level strategy to detailed task management in Excel or another tool.

Pros and Cons

Pros: Highly visual and collaborative, ideal for workshops and remote team alignment. A massive library of templates is accessible even on the free plan.
Cons: It is not a project execution tool. Exported data will require formatting and organization once it is in Excel.

Website: Miro Project Plan Templates

8. Lucid (Lucidchart / Lucidspark) Template Gallery

Lucid offers a visually driven approach to project management, focusing on formal planning artifacts like Gantt charts, Work Breakdown Structures (WBS), and RACI matrices. While primarily a diagramming tool, its data linking features allow you to import data from Excel or Google Sheets to automatically generate diagrams. This makes it an excellent choice for creating professional-looking project documents based on data managed in your spreadsheets.

Why It's a Top Choice

Lucid excels at translating complex spreadsheet data into clear, shareable visuals. Instead of manually building charts in Excel, you can connect your sheet as a data source and let Lucidchart build the WBS or timeline automatically. This is perfect for stakeholder communication and ensures your diagrams always reflect the latest data from your project plan. The ability to export these visuals for reports is an added bonus.

Pros and Cons

Pros: Produces clear, professional deliverables perfect for executive reporting. Can auto-generate diagrams from Excel data.
Cons: The free plan limits users to only three editable documents. Full data-linking and automation features require a paid subscription.

Website: Lucid Gantt Chart Templates

9. Atlassian Confluence Templates

For teams already embedded in the Atlassian ecosystem, Confluence offers powerful templates that transform project planning into a collaborative document. These templates integrate directly with execution tools like Jira. For Excel users, the key is the ability to embed formatted spreadsheets directly onto a Confluence page. This creates a single source of truth where stakeholders can view your Excel-based project plan alongside other project documentation.

Why It's a Top Choice

The key advantage is its seamless integration with other tools. You can create project plan pages and directly link tasks to Jira issues, but also display live Excel files stored in SharePoint or OneDrive. This bridges the gap between high-level documentation, spreadsheet-based planning, and day-to-day execution, promoting exceptional transparency without forcing your team to abandon familiar tools.

Pros and Cons

Pros: Excellent for creating transparent, living project documentation. Seamlessly integrates Jira and embedded Excel files.
Cons: Less effective as a standalone tool if your team doesn't use other Atlassian products. Embedding and permissions for Excel files can require some initial setup.

Website: Atlassian Confluence Project Plan Templates

10. ProjectManagement.com (PMI community) Templates

ProjectManagement.com, the online community for the Project Management Institute (PMI), hosts a vast library of downloadable templates created by and for project management practitioners. This is a goldmine for anyone looking for formal, best-practice templates specifically in Excel and Microsoft Project formats. You can find everything from detailed work breakdown structures (WBS) and status reports to comprehensive project plans ready to be opened in Excel.

Why It's a Top Choice

The key strength is its alignment with established PMI best practices. These Excel templates are grounded in real-world project experience, providing a practical and professional framework. They often include pre-built formulas, conditional formatting, and structured layouts designed for rigorous project tracking, saving you the effort of building them from scratch. This is an ideal resource for standardizing your project documentation.

Pros and Cons

Pros: Deep catalog of classic project management deliverables in Excel format, aligned with PMI standards, and contributed by experienced practitioners.
Cons: Many of the best templates require a PMI membership. The quality can vary, and some templates may use outdated Excel features.

Website: ProjectManagement.com Templates

11. Notion Template Gallery

Notion offers a flexible ecosystem of project management templates that integrate databases, timelines, and documentation into a single workspace. For those who love the flexibility of Excel but want more structure, Notion is a powerful alternative. Its key feature for spreadsheet users is the robust CSV import/export capability, which allows you to move data seamlessly between Notion's structured databases and Excel's familiar grid.

Why It's a Top Choice

Notion's strength lies in its modularity. Its project planning templates are built with adaptable "blocks" that can be customized to fit any workflow. You can manage your project in Notion's dynamic environment and then export the underlying database to a CSV file for advanced analysis, charting, or sharing with stakeholders who prefer working in Excel. This gives you the best of both worlds: a collaborative workspace and powerful data analysis.

Pros and Cons

Pros: Highly flexible and customizable, combines documentation and task management seamlessly, and offers a generous free tier.
Cons: Advanced reporting often requires exporting data to Excel. Community templates can vary in quality and may become outdated.

Website: Notion Template Gallery

12. Etsy (digital marketplace for PM templates)

Etsy is a large online marketplace offering thousands of low-cost, downloadable project planning templates, with a huge focus on designs for Excel and Google Sheets. It provides an impressive variety of options, from simple task lists and Gantt charts to complex multi-project trackers with dashboards. This platform is an excellent choice for individuals or small teams looking for budget-friendly, aesthetically pleasing, or highly specific solutions ready to use in Excel immediately.

Why It's a Top Choice

The key advantage is the sheer volume of affordable, ready-made Excel files. Unlike subscription-based software, you make a one-time purchase for instant digital delivery. This model is perfect for finding niche project planning templates tailored to specific industries that are pre-formatted with charts, conditional formatting, and dashboards, saving you hours of setup time in Excel.

Pros and Cons

Pros: Quick and inexpensive solutions for specific Excel formats, instant access after purchase, and many options available for Google Sheets.
Cons: Quality and support can vary significantly between sellers. The templates are static files and lack native automation or real-time collaboration features found in dedicated platforms.

Website: Etsy Project Management Templates

Project Planning Templates: 12-Platform Comparison

Provider	Core features	UX / Quality (★)	Price & Value (💰)	Target audience (👥)	Unique selling point (✨/🏆)
Microsoft (Project & Excel templates)	Native Excel/Project templates: Gantt, timelines, guides	★★★★☆ familiar M365 UX	💰 Free with M365; Project features require license	👥 M365 users, traditional PMs	🏆 Native Excel/Project integration; enterprise-ready ✨
Smartsheet Template Gallery	Prebuilt sheets, Gantt, rollups, automations	★★★★☆ structured & reliable	💰 Paid plans for full automation & rollups	👥 Excel-like PM teams, enterprise	🏆 Strong reporting, dashboards & automations ✨
Asana Templates	Project tasks, timelines, integrations, examples	★★★☆☆ simple & approachable	💰 Free tier; Timeline/advanced features on paid plans	👥 Marketing/design teams, non-technical users	✨ Low-friction setup + CSV import/export for Excel
monday.com Templates	One‑click boards, columns, Gantt, automations	★★★★☆ visual & fast to adopt	💰 Tiered pricing; advanced features paid	👥 Teams needing visual boards & workflows	✨ Visual boards + quick templates & Excel integration
ClickUp Template Center	Templates with docs, Gantt, custom fields, views	★★★★☆ feature‑rich (learning curve)	💰 Generous free tier; paid for advanced features	👥 Teams wanting an all‑in‑one work hub	🏆 Unified templates linking tasks, docs & dashboards ✨
Airtable Templates & Guides	DB-driven templates, Grid/Kanban/Timeline/Gantt views	★★★★☆ flexible but needs config	💰 Free/basic; advanced views on paid tiers	👥 Data-centric teams, program managers	✨ Schema flexibility + multiple view switching
Miro Template Library + Miroverse	Visual boards, timeline cards, community templates	★★★★☆ excellent for workshops	💰 Free access; collaboration features on paid plans	👥 Cross-functional workshops, UX/product teams	🏆 Massive visual template gallery + CSV export ✨
Lucid (Lucidchart / Lucidspark)	Gantt, WBS, RACI, collaborative whiteboards	★★★★☆ polished visuals	💰 Paid tiers; limited free plan	👥 Stakeholder comms, formal PM deliverables	✨ Professional diagrams from Excel data ✨
Atlassian Confluence Templates	Project pages, Jira links, roadmaps, briefs	★★★★☆ great for living docs	💰 Free/basic; enterprise features paid	👥 Jira/software teams, documentation-heavy orgs	🏆 Seamless Jira & embedded Excel file integration ✨
ProjectManagement.com (PMI) Templates	Downloadable Word/Excel/MPP templates by practitioners	★★★☆☆ varied quality; practitioner-focused	💰 Some free; many require PMI membership	👥 PMI practitioners, PMOs standardizing docs	✨ Deep PMI-aligned Excel library & artifacts
Notion Template Gallery	Database templates, relations, rollups, docs	★★★★☆ flexible & doc-centric	💰 Low cost; many community templates free	👥 Teams wanting docs + planning in one place	✨ Combine planning & docs + Excel export ✨
Etsy (digital marketplace)	Thousands of niche downloadable spreadsheets & trackers	★★★☆☆ quality varies by seller	💰 Very low one‑time prices; pay-per-template	👥 Budget buyers, one-off deliverables	✨ Cheap, niche Excel templates with instant download

Final Thoughts

We've explored a comprehensive landscape of project planning templates, from the familiar cells of Microsoft Excel to the dynamic canvases of Miro and the structured databases of Airtable. The core takeaway is clear: you don't need to start from a blank page. A well-chosen Excel template, or a template from a tool that integrates with it, provides the scaffolding you need to build a successful project, saving you time and establishing a proven framework for your team.

The journey through platforms like Smartsheet, Asana, and monday.com showed that you can combine the power of dedicated tools with the analytical flexibility of Excel. The foundational principles remain the same, whether you're using a Gantt chart in Excel or a Kanban board in ClickUp.

Key Takeaways for Your Next Project

As you move forward, keep these essential insights in mind:

No Single "Best" Template: The ideal template is the one that best fits your project's complexity and your team's workflow. A simple Excel task list might be perfect for a small campaign, while a complex initiative will demand a robust Gantt chart with automated progress tracking.
Adaptation is Mandatory: A template is a starting point. The most successful project managers customize these resources to fit their specific needs. Use AI tools to help you add custom formulas, adjust timelines, or generate risk assessments directly within your Excel sheet.
Balance Simplicity and Detail: The goal is clarity, not clutter. Your project plan should be detailed enough to guide action but simple enough for any stakeholder to understand. If your Excel template becomes too cumbersome to update, it's a sign that it needs to be simplified or automated.

How to Choose the Right Project Planning Template

Feeling overwhelmed? Here’s a simple process. First, define your core requirements. Are you managing a highly visual project (consider Miro and export to Excel) or a data-heavy, timeline-driven initiative (a dedicated Excel or Smartsheet template is best)?

Next, consider your team's skills. Sticking with Excel leverages existing knowledge, reducing the learning curve. Finally, think about scale. Do you need a simple, one-off Excel file, or a scalable template that can be standardized? Answering these questions will point you toward the most effective project planning templates for your situation.

Ultimately, the power of a template lies in how you use it. By selecting the right foundation and customizing it with care—and a little help from AI—you transform a simple spreadsheet into the central nervous system of your project, guiding it from concept to successful completion.

Ready to supercharge your Excel templates? Instead of just filling in the blanks, use AI to analyze data, generate insights, and automate updates directly within your spreadsheets. Discover how Elyx.AI can turn your static project plans into dynamic, intelligent dashboards by visiting us at Elyx.AI.