MS Planner produces different outputs to 'description' field randomly

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MS Planner produces different outputs to 'description' field randomly

Minna T 0

Hi,
We have a basic Planner and we have taken the Task's description field into use for logging in planned hours, current/completed hours and a description. The filling rule is that on the first row the user writes hours s/he plans on spending on the task, on the second row the user fills out currently spent hours (or if task is finished, completed hours) and the third row is for textual description. E.g.
10,5
9
This is my task description
User's image

Then we have a robot which fetches the data and saves these three values on separate columns in excel. When a user changes something in the field (e.g. adds more spent hours on the second row), robot fetches the new modified information.

But it seems that we end up having two different outputs from Planner:
body...
"description"10,5\r\n9\r\nThis is my task description

and randomly:
body...
"description"10,59\r\nThis is my task description

So in the latter case, our robot does not know how to separate the numbers from the first and the second row.

What is the reason for the different descriptions? We are unable to find any logic when to get the erroneous value and when not.
We have tested using Planner in browser and Planner in Teams, they are not the culprits.

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Answer 1

Liora D 15,970 Microsoft External Staff Moderator

Dear @Minna T,

I hope you’re having a good day.

Thank you for reaching out and for the detailed explanation of your scenario, it’s very helpful to understand how you are structuring and processing the Planner Description field.

I’ve set up a similar test environment on my side using Planner tasks and attempted to reproduce your scenario. However, I was not able to consistently reproduce the same multi-line behavior as shown in your example.

To better understand what might be different in your environment and investigate this further, could you please share a few more details? It would be especially helpful to see:

The exact steps you follow when entering or updating the Description field
A screenshot showing how the Description appears in Planner
A screenshot or sample output from your robot showing both a “correct” and an “incorrect” case

These details will help determine whether the behavior is influenced by how the content is being entered, rendered, or retrieved.

Additionally, if possible, you might try checking the same task’s Description directly via the Planner API (task details endpoint) at the time the issue occurs, to confirm whether the merged value is already present in the source data or introduced later in the process.

Thanks again for your time and cooperation, I look forward to your update.

Please understand that our initial response does not always resolve the issue immediately. However, with your help and more detailed information, we can work together to find a solution.

Warm regards,

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Minna T 0 Reputation points

2026-06-04T10:17:11.7866667+00:00

Hi,
Thanks for your response, Liora!

Find attached two documents (hopefully managed to insert them correctly).

Planner.pdf contains the steps performed by one user who suffers occasionally from these problems.
(it does not matter what the state of the task is or whether the user fills up planned and spent hours at one go or updates the second row later)

Planner screenshots.pdfcontains screenshots of one Ok task and two failed tasks: Screenshots from Planner task card, Planner API and the excel which is the output the robot produces.

Task 1: this shows OK
Task 2: Not OK, values are not divided onto separate columns
Task 3: Not OK, both values are decimal values, so robot does not interpret 0,50,5 as a number but ignores the whole input from the field

Personally, I cannot see any difference in these what comes to the steps performed or to the Planner GUI and there seems to be no consistent logic when, how or why the data on rows are handled incorrectly.

But unfortunately, this messing up our PBI reporting which is produced from the output excel generated by the robot, so some kind of reason for the behaviour would be good to know.

[Moderator note: Personally Identifiable Information removed]
Liora D 15,970 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-06-04T15:32:17.6866667+00:00
Hi Minna,

Thank you very much for the additional details and examples you shared.

In text data, line breaks are represented by special characters, typically \r\n.

\n means moving to a new line

\r resets the cursor to the beginning of the line

When both are preserved (for example: 0,5\r\n0,5), the system can clearly separate the values into two rows.

However, based on your screenshots, there are cases where the Planner API returns the description without properly preserving these line break characters. Instead of keeping the values on separate lines, they are returned as a single concatenated string (0,50,5 or 86,5).

Therefore, this will need further investigation from the Microsoft Power platform team. I would recommend that you consider raising a support request through the Power Platform admin center and include:

the affected task IDs

screenshots of both working and non-working cases

the API “Get task details” outputs (as you have already provided)

You can refer to this article to get support: Get support in the Power Platform admin center - Power Platform | Microsoft Learn

This will allow the backend team to analyze why the description field is not consistently preserving line breaks.

In the meantime, if possible, you might consider using a more explicit delimiter (instead of line breaks) for parsing, to reduce the impact on your reporting workflow.

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MS Planner produces different outputs to 'description' field randomly

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